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Multimedia Technologies' Influence on LanguageAcquisition in English Language LearnersLarissa Karina ParrillaWalden University

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Walden University

College of Education

This is to certify that the doctoral dissertation by

Larissa Parrilla

has been found to be complete and satisfactory in all respects, and that any and all revisions required by the review committee have been made.

Review Committee Dr. Leslie Moller, Committee Chairperson, Education Faculty

Dr. Wade Smith, Committee Member, Education Faculty Dr. Gerald Giraud, University Reviewer, Education Faculty

Chief Academic Officer Eric Riedel, Ph.D.

Walden University 2016

Abstract

Multimedia Technologies’ Influence on Language Acquisition in English Language

Learners

by

Larissa Parrilla

MPh, University of Puerto Rico, Medical Science Campus, 1999

BS, University of Puerto Rico, 1998

Dissertation Submitted in Partial Fulfillment

of the Requirements for the Degree of

Doctor of Philosophy

Educational Technology

Walden University

August 2016

Abstract

English as a Second Language (ESL) learners at the upper elementary level have

struggled to demonstrate the vocabulary required to read in English at grade-level.

Although multimedia technologies have demonstrated positive effects as language

acquisition educational tools at the university level, it remains unclear how useful they

are for language acquisition at the elementary level. This quasi-experimental study used

dual coding theory as a framework to examine the relationship between the level of

reading comprehension upper elementary students developed and their construction of

word meanings through use of multimedia technologies. The study utilized convenience

sampling of 85 students divided into treatment and control groups in a Puerto Rican

Montessori school. The treatment consisted of use of multimedia technologies that

included video, audio, images, and words in a digital environment for vocabulary

acquisition instruction. Data sources included pretest and posttest results for the Maze

Close test that measures reading comprehension. These results were analyzed using a

paired t test. Results indicated that students in treatment groups developed greater

reading comprehension than did those in control groups. However, the difference in

scores between the groups was not significant, so the null hypothesis was not rejected.

Further research is required in order to determine whether a positive relationship can

exist between multimedia technology usage and development of upper elementary

student vocabulary and reading comprehension. This study indicates the importance of

examining whether multimedia technology use in elementary student English reading

comprehension can create reading gains for upper elementary ESL students.

Multimedia Technologies’ Influence on Language Acquisition in English Language

by

Larissa Parrilla

MPh, University of Puerto Rico, Medical Science Campus, 1999

BS, University of Puerto Rico, 1998

Dissertation Submitted in Partial Fulfillment

of the Requirements for the Degree of

Doctor of Philosophy

Educational Technology

Walden University

August 2016

Dedication

This work is dedicated to my family. To my father, who always encouraged me to

keep going and passed away while I was on the journey to this dissertation. To my

mother, who supported me in completing this work. To my 15-year old daughter, who

had to wait many times for me to answer her because I was writing or conducting

research for my dissertation. Without your support and encouragement, I could not have

accomplished my dissertation. Thank you for all you have done.

Acknowledgments

I would like to express the deepest appreciation to my readers, editors, and

friends, Dr. Marta Suarez and Cristina Molina. Without your patience and kindness, I

would have lost confidence in accomplishing my dissertation.

I would like to thank my committee chair, Dr. Leslie Moller, for his constant

guidance, patience, and support. I would like to thank Dr. Wade Smith for his help with

my methodology.

i

Table of Contents

List of Tables ..................................................................................................................... iv

Chapter 1: Introduction to the Study ................................................................................... 1

Background ................................................................................................................... 2

Problem Statement ........................................................................................................ 5

Purpose of the Study ..................................................................................................... 6

Research Questions and Hypotheses ............................................................................ 6

Theoretical Foundation ................................................................................................. 7

Nature of the Study ..................................................................................................... 10

Definitions ................................................................................................................... 10

Assumptions ................................................................................................................ 12

Scope and Delimitation ............................................................................................... 12

Limitation .................................................................................................................... 13

Significance ................................................................................................................. 14

Summary ..................................................................................................................... 15

Chapter 2: Literature Review ............................................................................................ 17

Introduction ................................................................................................................. 17

Literature Search Strategy ........................................................................................... 19

Theoretical Foundation ............................................................................................... 19

Montessori Philosophy and Pedagogy .................................................................. 19

Dual Coding theory ............................................................................................... 23

Literacy Versus Reading ....................................................................................... 27

ii

English as a Second Language (ESL) Learners and Reading Development ........ 27

Vocabulary Instruction .......................................................................................... 38

Multimedia Learning ............................................................................................ 48

Current Study .............................................................................................................. 61

Chapter 3: Research Method ............................................................................................. 62

Introduction ................................................................................................................. 62

Research Design and Approach .................................................................................. 62

Population ................................................................................................................... 63

Sampling and Sampling Procedure ............................................................................. 64

Intervention ................................................................................................................. 66

Instrumentation and Materials .................................................................................... 66

Reading Comprehension Tests ............................................................................. 67

Demographic Information ..................................................................................... 69

Definition of Operational Measures ............................................................................ 69

Data Collection and Analysis ...................................................................................... 70

Protection of Human Participants ............................................................................... 71

Chapter 4: Results ............................................................................................................. 73

Introduction ................................................................................................................. 73

Purpose and Problem .................................................................................................. 73

Research Questions ..................................................................................................... 73

Data Screening and Preparation .................................................................................. 74

Intervention Fidelity .................................................................................................... 75

iii

Study Results .............................................................................................................. 76

Beginner ELL Sample ........................................................................................... 76

Intermediate ELL Sample ..................................................................................... 78

Advanced ELL Sample ......................................................................................... 81

Summary ..................................................................................................................... 83

Chapter 5: Discussion, Conclusions, and Recommendations ........................................... 84

Introduction ................................................................................................................. 84

Purpose and Nature of the Study .......................................................................... 84

Summary of Key Findings From the Study .......................................................... 85

Interpretation of the Findings ...................................................................................... 88

Findings and the Literature ................................................................................... 88

Analysis and Interpretation of Findings ................................................................ 89

Limitations of the Study .............................................................................................. 92

Implications ................................................................................................................. 93

Conclusion .................................................................................................................. 94

Recommendations ....................................................................................................... 94

References ......................................................................................................................... 96

Appendix A: IRB Approval Number .............................................................................. 108

iv

List of Tables

Table 1. Criteria for Maze Cloze Passage Creation .......................................................... 68

Table 2. Final Distribution of Subjects ............................................................................. 75

Table 3. Result of the Control vs. Experimental Groups, Beginner ESL Level ............... 77

Table 4. Result of the Control vs. Experimental Groups, Independent Sample Test of the

Beginner ESL Level .................................................................................................. 78

Table 5. Result of the Control vs. Experimental Groups, Intermediate ESL Level ......... 79

Table 6. Result of the Control vs. Experimental Groups, Independent Sample Test of the

Intermediate ESL Level ............................................................................................ 80

Table 7. Result of the Control vs. Experimental Groups, Advanced ESL Level ............. 82

Table 8. Result of the Control vs. Experimental Groups, Independent Sample Test of the

Advanced ESL Level ................................................................................................ 83

1

Chapter 1: Introduction to the Study

Learning to read and comprehend what is being read is a predictor of future

socioeconomic progress. For the Hispanic population in the United States, developing

English literacy is critical to economic progress and to increasing individuals’ potential

contributions to society. The U.S. National Assessment of Educational Progress (2007)

reported that the number of school-aged children (ages 5–17) who spoke a language other

than English at home increased from 4.7 to 11.2 million between 1980 and 2009. In

addition, in 2009, about 21% of children ages 5–17 (or 11.2 million) spoke a language

other than English at home, and 5% (or 2.7 million) spoke English with difficulty.

Seventy-three percent of children who spoke English with difficulty spoke Spanish

(National Assessment of Educational Progress, 2007). Puerto Rico is a U.S. territory

whose official languages are English and Spanish. Learning to read proficiently in both

languages results in better employment and professional development opportunities.

Two of the most influential factors in learning a second language are school

instruction and exposure to the language (Biemiller, 2003). However, learning to read

any language is a complex process that depends initially on multiple decoding skills.

Once children are able to master decoding skills, the influence of other variables in the

reading progress is more noticeable. Eventually, the development of reading

understanding depends on breadth of vocabulary and vocabulary skills in a direct

proportional relationship (Becker, 1977; Chall & Conard, 1991; Chall, Jacobs, &

Baldwin, 1990; Francis, Lesaux, & August, 2008; Lesaux & Kieffer, 2010; National

Institute for Literacy, 2001; Silverman & Crandall, 2010; Snowling & Hulme, 2011).

2

During the early stages of development, vocabulary learning depends mostly on oral

communication skills, which are developed primarily at home (Lesaux, Kieffer, Faller, &

Kelley, 2010). Therefore, in contexts where children’s only contact with the second

language occurs within school educational programs targeting their language

development, exposure, and enrichment are essential. This study contributes to the set of

current language programs designed to facilitate ESL children’s acquisition of the

English language. This chapter presents a detailed explanation of the research problem as

well as the study intent, variables to be measured, and theoretical framework supporting

the design. In addition, the chapter contains a general snapshot of current research in the

areas of interest related to the study and the possible limitations and challenges.

Background

Due to Puerto Rican children’s lack of exposure to English at home, special

educational programs considering this population need to be implemented to target oral

communication skills and vocabulary acquisition. Those charged with the development of

such programs need to ponder children’s culture (Stahl, 2003); word frequency (Miller &

Roodenrys, 2012); breadth versus depth of vocabulary (Proctor, Uccelli, Dalton, & Snow,

2009); and concreteness and contextual richness (Gutierrez, 2010; Lesaux, Geva, Koda,

Siegel, & Shanahan, 2008; Sadoski, 2005). In addition, vocabulary learning can be

increased by enriched educational environments, which can allow children to be exposed

to multiple forms of vocabulary interaction (Chai & Erlam, 2008; Cohen & Johnson,

2010; Farley, Ramonda, & Liu, 2012; Mayer & Moreno, 2003; Rosen, Fullwood, &

Henley, 2012; Schwartz, 2005; Silverman & Hines, 2009).

3

The Montessori pedagogy is based on the active involvement of the child in the

learning process (Lillard, 1996; Montessori, 1966). In a Montessori classroom, children

learn by exploration. This environment is explored through the development of the

senses. Subsequently, throughout their years in lower and upper elementary Montessori

schools, children interact with a variety of materials that allow them to develop skills and

knowledge, as well as strengthen their self-esteem (Lillard, 1996). This pedagogy invites

the child to constantly learn by multiple channels. For example, language is integrated

into the whole curriculum and is worked through the use of illustrations or physical

objects of what is being read. The Montessori method supports the use of pedagogical

tools that help to stimulate different areas of the brain. This goes hand in hand with dual

coding theory, which indicates that human beings have the ability to store information

both verbally and nonverbally (Paivio, 1991).

Furthermore, according to this theory, people can create connections between

verbal and nonverbal memories, which allow them to have additional resources to access

and retrieve stored information (Paivio, 1991). This theory supports the use of

multimedia technologies to present the student with information resources that integrate

verbal and nonverbal stimulation. Nonverbal elements may include an image, a sound, a

smell, or a sensation. Multimedia technologies enable the use of images and sounds to

learn vocabulary. For instance, the verbal word can be associated with an image, an

animated action, a sound, or a combination of images, sounds, and text. This association

allows the child to have multiple references to the word, thus increasing his or her short-

and long-term word-learning capacity (Farley et al., 2012). Nonetheless, it is important to

4

consider that the degree of effectiveness in the use of multimedia technologies depends

primarily on the level of cognitive overload learners can experience when they are

exposed to a combination of elements that stimulate both memory channels. One of the

media components (verbal or nonverbal) could distract or divide the learner’s attention,

provoking a memory overload and a decrease in learning achievement (Mayer & Moreno,

1998, 2003).

The veracity of the dual coding theory has been widely proven through the use of

multimedia technologies (Chai & Erlam, 2008; Cohen & Johnson, 2010; Farley et al.,

2012; Mayer & Moreno, 2003; Rosen et al., 2012; Schwartz, 2005; Silverman & Hines,

2009), yet the majority of these studies have been conducted on college students. Little

has been done to explore the use of multimedia to increase vocabulary acquisition in

Montessori upper elementary schools for ESL learners. In addition, it is important to note

that in all of the studies reviewed for this dissertation that involved the use of multimedia

technologies for knowledge acquisition, the student was passively receiving the

information. The student’s interaction with the multimedia technology was limited to

setting the media pace; the student did not necessarily engage actively in the learning

process.

Correspondingly, vocabulary acquisition processes have been studied from

different approaches with English native (L1) speakers and ESL children (Duesbery, &

Alonzo, 2005; Mancilla-Martinez & Lesaux, 2010; Lesaux, Crosson, Kieffer, & Pierce,

2010; Riedel, 2007; Yovanoff, Schilling, Carlisle, Scott, & Zeng, 2007). The majority of

research conducted on ESL learning in children has focused on the early elementary

5

grades. During the early elementary years, reading decoding skills present the greatest

challenge to students, along with oral communication skills. Decoding skill refers to the

ability to connect characters to oral sounds when reading. Research has been conducted

to explore the impact of interventions that address the development of oral

communication and decoding skills. The intention of these interventions has been to

study reading comprehension at the upper elementary level (Baker, Stoolmiller, Good III,

& Baker, 2011; Brice & Brice, 2009; Kieffer, Biancarosa, & Mancilla-Martinez, 2013;

Kim, 2012; Yopp & Stapleton, 2008). These studies have demonstrated the critical role

decoding skills play in learning to read and eventually understanding what is being read.

However, these studies also point out that in upper elementary, reading comprehension

becomes a major challenge for multiple reasons, including increased complexity of class

text materials and lack of vocabulary knowledge. It remains necessary to demonstrate to

what extent interactive multimedia technologies can reinforce the vocabulary acquisition

process for upper elementary ESL children over the short and long term. Detailed

discussion of this matter is presented in Chapter 2 of this dissertation.

This study contributes to the literature by establishing pedagogical methods that

combine technology dynamically and proactively with the vocabulary learning process.

These methods can be easily adopted by teachers and effectively implemented in upper

elementary classrooms with ESL children.

Problem Statement

Although multimedia technologies have proven to be effective educational tools

for language and information acquisition, most of the studies in this area have been

6

conducted at the university level and have required a passive role for the student. There is

a need for increased understanding of the contribution of multimedia technologies to the

process of language acquisition in ESL children at the upper elementary level. A review

of the literature revealed that there is little evidence of the effect multimedia technology

use might have in the acquisition of vocabulary over the short and long term.

Furthermore, the literature fails to address whether an active role while using this

technology might increase the learning results and ultimately increase reading

comprehension.

Purpose of the Study

The purpose of this quantitative study was to explore the contribution that the

active use of multimedia technologies can have to vocabulary acquisition and

subsequently reading comprehension in children from fourth through sixth grade who are

learning English as a second language. The study evaluated the effect of the intervention

through quantitative data collection. Statistical tests measured reading comprehension

before and after a multimedia vocabulary teaching intervention.

Research Questions and Hypotheses

o RQ1: Can the use of interactive multimedia technology (integration of picture,

audio, and text in a digital environment) by ESL upper elementary children

increase deep processing of new vocabulary (measured by application of new

vocabulary in multiple contexts)?

7

o Null Hypothesis to RQ1: Interactive multimedia technologies will have no

significant effect on ESL upper elementary children’s deep processing of new

vocabulary when compared with their current classroom learning practices.

o Alternate Hypothesis to RQ1: ESL upper elementary children’s use of

interactive multimedia technologies will result in an increase of deep

processing of new vocabulary when compared with current classroom

learning practices.

o RQ2: Can ESL upper elementary children’s active interactions with

multimedia technologies for vocabulary learning contribute to increasing their

reading comprehension capacity?

o Null Hypothesis to RQ2: ESL upper elementary children’s active interactions

with multimedia technologies for vocabulary learning will have no

statistically significant contribution to increasing their reading comprehension

capacity.

o Alternative Hypothesis to RQ2: ESL upper elementary children’s active

interactions with multimedia technologies to learn vocabulary will have a

statistically significant contribution to increasing their reading comprehension

capacity when compared with their current classroom learning practices.

Theoretical Foundation

In Montessori pedagogy, teachers present materials or learning activities, offering

a gift to students. This gift is initial and fundamental knowledge given to them to awaken

their inquiring and deeper exploration of information. Through active interaction between

8

the material and the student, the latter can discover and deepen the basic knowledge that

was initially presented. That is why, in Montessori learning environments, students are

observed working constantly and actively with their five senses, which work together to

maximize the child's learning process. Therefore, in Montessori education, the learning

process is interactive, inquisitive, and pertinent. This allows constant cultivation of

intrinsically motivating agents permitting the child to experience a pleasant, cheerful, and

natural education. Montessori recognized the importance of actively using the senses to

maximize learning, and the materials she designed for the elementary school curriculum

reflected this conviction (Montessori, 1965). Subsequently, significant developments in

the field of neuroscience arose to validate her ideas. One such theory is the dual coding

Paivio (1991) developed. This theory originates from the premise that human beings

learn by the systematic activation of short-term memory and long-term memory, as well

as access and modification of schemes in the latter (Lohr & Gall, 2008). Paivio delved

into this idea by specifying that information can be stored verbally and nonverbally. In

addition, according to Paivio, there can be interaction between both memories either to

store or to access information. This system of storage and access of information has

fundamental performance characteristics that need to be considered when designing

instructional practices. The details of these characteristics are presented and discussed in

Chapter 2 of this dissertation.

Multimedia technologies support the application of the dual coding theory

because they allow the presentation of information in multiple forms simultaneously

(Mayer & Moreno, 2003). Learning with the use of multimedia technologies allows the

9

user to dynamically interact with content and design. For this reason, multimedia has

been considered a facilitating tool of language learning (Chai & Erlam, 2008; Cohen &

Johnson, 2010; Farley et al., 2012; Mayer & Moreno, 2003; Silverman & Hines, 2009).

Unfortunately, studies were multimedia has been considered facilitating tools of language

learning were performed on college students who were passively involved in the process.

Any application must consider the possibility of cognitive overload, which can occur if

the design is not well balanced for the user. In Chapter 2 of this dissertation, I discuss

various ways in which media technologies have been used for learning a second

language.

Being able to understand what is read is a significant component of learning

English as a second language. Vocabulary acquisition and reading comprehension are

intertwined processes that require significantly more attention at the upper elementary

level. An increase in vocabulary acquisition has a positive effect on reading

comprehension, which will be translated into facilitating new vocabulary acquisition.

That is why vocabulary learning programs for both native English (L1) learners and ESL

learners have been developed extensively. Many of these programs target vocabulary

knowledge, words with highly academic utility, word learning strategies, and multiple

word exposure (Lesaux et al., 2010). Montessori active learning environments might help

foster the integration of multimedia technologies that, based on dual coding theory,

facilitate vocabulary learning and consequently enhance reading comprehension ability.

10

Nature of the Study

This was a pretest-posttest control-group study designed to determine the

relationship between the reading comprehension performances of ESL children from

fourth to sixth grade after their participation in an intervention to help them learn

English-language vocabulary. The independent variable in this study was a multimedia

vocabulary intervention program. The intervention consisted of weekly preselected

readings and multimedia vocabulary activities developed to increase children’s

knowledge of the words being learned. The dependent variable was children’s reading

comprehension capacity measured before and after children’s completion of the

intervention program. A comparison group was included as part of the study and received

regular teaching strategies for learning vocabulary. Furthermore, the assignment of

subjects to each group was random, and the intervention vocabulary program was applied

only to the treatment group (Campbell & Stanley, 1963). At the end of the 8-week

intervention program, reading comprehension capacity was assessed. This design allowed

the control of internal validity factors such as maturation, age, home income, previous

English background, gender, teacher style, and ethnicity group.

Definitions

Literacy: A person’s capacity for reading and writing. It is influenced by multiple

factors, such as educational background, culture, environment, and social context (Snow,

1998).

Reading: “The use of the products and principles of the writing system to get at

the meaning of a written text” (Snow, 1998, p. 42).

11

Reading comprehension: The capacity to understand words’ meaning in context

and to make inferences from text (Snow, 1998).

Decoding skills: “The aspect of the reading process that involves deriving a

pronunciation for a printed sequence of letters based on knowledge of spelling-sound

correspondences” (Snow, 1998, p. 52)

Oral communication skills: The abilities to use language (vocabulary, grammar,

and comprehension) to communicate orally with others.

Common underlying proficiency model: Language-learning model that supports

the existence of a rapid transfer of acquired skills from one language to another

(Gutierrez, 2010).

English as a second language (ESL) learners: Language learners whose primary

language is not English.

Montessori pedagogy: A child-centered educational methodology based on the

cognitive and physical developmental needs of the child.

Dual-code theory: A memory and processing theory that indicates that

information can be stored in different forms, verbal and nonverbal (Paivio, 1991).

Multimedia technologies: Tools that allow the combination of video and sound in

digital environments.

Cognitive overload: Refers to the event where the cognitive capacity of the person

is exceeded.

12

Assumptions

The study was designed to develop pedagogical methodologies that English

teachers can use to help their upper elementary ESL students learn English vocabulary

and acquire skills for future experiences of continual learning. It was assumed that

methodologies using multimedia technologies are available to public school children in

Puerto Rico and that, independently of the school philosophy (i.e., Montessori or not),

they can be implemented. In Montessori schools, children have the freedom to choose

when to work in their follow ups. I assumed that this freedom would not interfere with

the tasks they had for their English class. I assumed for this study that participants were

ESL learners from low economic backgrounds. Children in the study were between 9 and

12 years of age. They had received some form of English language education in the lower

elementary grades. Therefore, it was assumed that these children had achieved decoding

skills properly.

Scope and Delimitation

This study addressed the acquisition of English vocabulary and vocabulary-

learning skills in upper elementary children whose first language was Spanish. In

assessing children's reading comprehension capacity, vocabulary acquisition was

measured. Long-term language retention was not evaluated in this study. The selected

school was public and had adopted the Montessori methodology for the past 13 years.

The intervention impacted half of the children from fourth grade to sixth grade. The

difference between English levels was in the complexity of the vocabulary selected. The

13

students’ English teacher performed the intervention. These delimitations were an

attempt to control the study of extraneous variables that might affect its internal validity.

In Montessori schools, children are accustomed to active learning. They can use

concrete materials and more than one tool to learn. Although children have some

compulsory tasks to complete, they have the freedom to choose when to work on them,

and in multiple situations they can approach the same task differently. For example, in

order to learn the multiplication tables, Montessori children have more than five different

concrete materials. They can choose which one they are going to use; however, all of

them target the same skill. Furthermore, children in this study did not regularly speak

English at home or outside of their school. Traditionally, in most public schools in Puerto

Rico, English class lasts between 45 to 60 minutes. Therefore, oral language skills, which

can be developed through outside-school interaction or during school activities, are not

addressed or stimulated. Oral communication influences language acquisition and is

important in the development of reading comprehension skills.

Regardless of the scope and delimitations of this study, it can be implemented in

any educational context because it is based on learning principles that can be applied to

any population. The act of learning through meaningful activities that stimulate multiple

paths to store information is universal. Some variables might increase or decrease the

outcomes of these activities, but positive achievements can be reached anyway.

Limitation

The school selected for this study was the only public Montessori school in Puerto

Rico, with more than 5 years of implementation of this philosophy of education

14

exclusively. Therefore, students were taught in small groups of no more than eight per

level, and because Montessori education is multilevel, they could interact with older and

younger children in the same classroom environment. In addition, Montessori classrooms

have one teacher and one assistant. This allows teachers to have individualized contact

with students. Additionally, special education students do not leave the classroom;

instead, the special aid teacher comes to their classrooms to assist them. The setting of

this study did not reflect the average class size or public school environment in Puerto

Rico. Typically, public school classrooms in Puerto Rico consist of 25 to 30 children,

divided by age and guided by one teacher. Students from the special education program

are sometimes assigned to self-contained classrooms outside the regular track. The

characteristics of this study limit the possible generalizability of its results, thus reducing

its external validity. In addition, class sizes might limit the quantity of students

participating on each grade level. Sample size was a limitation of the study. Small sample

sizes reduce the likelihood of representing the population and significantly reduce the

level of statistical significance (Ravid, 2010).

Significance

Educational technology addresses ways in which technology can be used to

impact learning positively. Technologies that allow a user to communicate, interact, and

create multisensory experiences have evolved significantly over the past years. This study

presented an opportunity to use multimedia technologies that may be accessed free of

charge to increase learning opportunities for minority children learning English as a

second language. The independent practices explored through this study may contribute

15

to knowledge of effective learning practices in upper elementary classrooms to help

students acquire English vocabulary and may facilitate their reading-comprehension

experiences. Studies such as this one may contribute to the reduction of current

technology gaps by demonstrating the diversity of opportunities presented to English

language learners through the use of multimedia technologies. By supporting the

implementation of better technology practices in schools, it may be possible to pave the

way to an education that enables students to deepen their knowledge.

The highest dropout rate in Puerto Rico is observed in secondary schools (Disdier,

2012). The complexity of materials and knowledge increases significantly at the middle

and high school levels. Children who carry language gaps will confront additional

disadvantages for learning, and eventually school may become unbearable for them.

Increasing their language knowledge and giving them tools to learn more in the future

may positively contribute to the effort to prevent kids from dropping out of school.

Summary

This study presented an opportunity to explore multimedia technology usage in

learning vocabulary and increasing reading comprehension in upper elementary ESL

learners. Using multiple sensory representations during active interaction with

technology, children were expected to meaningfully interrelate with vocabulary to

understand it more deeply and apply it in further reading comprehension experiences.

This chapter has presented a general overview of the study design, implementation scope,

theoretical background, and current knowledge about the main topics related to the

intervention.

16

A literature review is presented in Chapter 2 on current research findings on ESL

learners and multimedia technologies. This chapter also presents the ground on which the

design and implementation of this study rested.

Chapter 3 describes the methodology used to study the research questions. This

chapter addresses analysis of covariance as a statistical approach to the analysis of

pretest-posttest research design. Chapter 4 presents the results of the study, and Chapter 5

presents the interpretation of the results, implications for social change, recommendations

for action, and recommendations for future research.

17

Chapter 2: Literature Review

Introduction

Even though Puerto Rico became a colonial possession of the United States in

1898, the primary language of the island’s inhabitants is Spanish. Due to Puerto Rico’s

political relationship with the U.S. government and the historical changes in its

government, English is taught as a second language. The common educational tendency

in Puerto Rico is for students to receive a 40- to 55-minute daily English class from

kindergarten to 12th grade. The local government and the public school system have

recognized the acquisition of the English language as beneficial for the future

professional development of the population and for ensuring improved opportunities for

migrants to the U.S. (National Institute for Curriculum Development, 2003).

Although learning English is highly valued in Puerto Rico, children’s first

encounter with English occurs through the school system. This presents a disadvantage

for ESL children, given that for native speakers, oral communication skills begin

developing from birth in family environments and through peer interactions. In Puerto

Rico, the language predominantly spoken at home and in the rest of the immediate

environment is Spanish. The U.S. Census Bureau (2009) has estimated that 95%of the

island population speaks a language other than English at home and that 82% speaks

English less than “very well.” In addition, according to the U.S. Census Bureau (2009),

20% of the U.S. population aged 5 and over speaks a language other than English at

home. Of this 20%, 76% are classified as Hispanic (U.S. Census Bureau, 2009). These

numbers have increased steadily since 1980 (National Assessment of Educational

18

Progress, 2007). The National Assessment of Educational Progress (2007) reported that

the number of school-aged children (children ages 5–17) who spoke a language other

than English at home increased from 4.7 to 11.2 million between 1980 and 2009.

Likewise, in 2009, about 21% of children aged 5–17 (or 11.2 million) spoke a language

other than English at home, and 5% (or 2.7 million) spoke English with difficulty.

Seventy-three percent of children who spoke English with difficulty spoke Spanish.

The reality these numbers represent has a direct effect on the school system.

Curriculum modification and remediation programs have been developed in order to

support the inclusion of this population in the educational system with equal

opportunities for their success and future wellbeing. In 2009-2010, the total number of

public school students in the United States was 48.0 million. The National Assessment of

Educational Progress (2007) estimated that 4.7 million students (10%) of public school

students were ESL learners. The integration and assurance of equal opportunities of this

population for work, prosperity, education, and health, among other things, is highly

influenced by literacy achievements (U.S. National Reading Panel, 2000). Consequently,

every effort in the development of educational practices that helps to improve English

reading skills has significant value.

The learner’s interaction with meaningful activities and knowledge, along with an

empathic learning environment, is essential to the process of learning a second language

(Adamson, 2005). In Montessori pedagogy, education is child centered. It is the child,

through his or her interactions with the environment and use of materials intentionally

placed in the classroom, who will develop his or her internal potential (Montessori,

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2007). Montessori pedagogy and dual coding theory, together with multimedia

technologies, can provide meaningful and effective conditions to ensure an approach that

helps ESL learners improve their reading capacities. This chapter lays a foundation in

Montessori pedagogy and dual coding theory with a review of research on ESL learners’

reading development. This knowledge provides a basis for supporting the capacity of

technologies that allow the integration of images, texts, and audio to improve reading

understanding in upper elementary ESL children.

Literature Search Strategy

The literature search was conducted through databases that included ERIC,

Education Research Complete, Education from SAGE, and Education Research Starters,

the library research database of Walden University and of the University of Puerto Rico.

The list of search terms used to conduct the literature search included dual coding theory,

ESL reading development, multimedia learning, and vocabulary instruction. The articles

reviewed in this study were mostly obtained from peer-reviewed professional journals, in

electronic or print versions. Several books were also reviewed to examine the

development of ideas and research regarding reading development in L1 learners and in

ESL learners.

Theoretical Foundation

Montessori Philosophy and Pedagogy

Montessori education is child centered. Children learn and develop through their

interaction with specially designed materials. Maria Montessori carefully and

systematically studied the development of children from the philosophical standpoint that

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within each child there is a wealth of possibilities for a better society. Through her

research, Montessori developed a deep respect for children and a great admiration for

their achievements, regardless of the environment in which they develop. This respect

and admiration made Montessori understand that within children there are natural,

inherent forces that move them to study and work hard in order to attain physical and

mental development.

Montessori classified childhood development into four developmental periods.

The first period is infancy (0-6 years of age). During this period, children absorb from

their surrounding environments what they need in order to adapt. This period is

characterized by the development of the senses and language. The second period,

childhood (6-12 years of age) is when children expand interiorly through their search for

connection with the culture and their peers. Adolescence (12-18 years of age) is the third

period, during which young adults have a need to give back by serving their community.

The last period defined by Montessori is maturity (18-24 years of age), when

specialization starts (Grazzini, 1996).

In each of these stages, the existence of natural internal development goals can be

observed. In order to reach these goals, there are established guidelines with directions

that can be followed. Additionally, there are windows of development opportunity within

the child’s cognitive system that facilitate reaching developmental goals successfully.

The process of transition from one stage to another depends on correctly meeting the

child’s needs in the previous period (Lillard, 1996). In fact, Lillard (1996) referred to a

letter from Maria Montessori titled “The Four Planes of Education” in which she claimed

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that schools were incapable of situating education at the service of the child's

developmental needs.

In Montessori elementary education, children acquire knowledge and experiences

through their senses (Montessori, 1966, 1967). Therefore, during the first period of

development, children are presented with a variety of materials carefully prepared to

promote the development of their senses. This instruction is critical to help the child,

among other things, develop a strong sense of self-esteem as he or she learns to be

independent in his or her immediate environments (home and school). In addition, the

characteristics of the material employed, such as color, smell, taste, texture, weight, and

height, help children establish order in their minds (Montessori, 1914). The central axes

of the Montessori education during the following three stages of development are

experiential learning and constant work in small investigations to deepen knowledge.

Children are guided during different interventions from concrete experiences to the

abstraction of concept and ideas. Although during Montessori’s lifetime neuroscience

was not as evolved as it is today, she knew that meaningful and concrete experiences

gave children the opportunity to learn using more than one of their senses (multiple areas

of their brains), thereby creating strong learning opportunities.

Liberty is the cornerstone of this methodology. Teachers must learn to respect the

child’s liberty to conduct his or her internal development. Montessori believed strongly

that inherent to children were necessary faculties for their physical and mental

development. To her, “our sole problem is that of offering the child the necessary

nourishment” (Montessori, 1917, p. 70). That is why she believed that “the secret of the

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free development of the child consists in organizing for him the means necessary for his

internal nourishment, means corresponding to a primitive impulse of the child”

(Montessori, 1917, p. 70). Consequently, the environment and the teacher who maintains

and supplements it should contain the means for auto-education. A Montessori teacher

should prepare materials and activities that awaken the child’s curiosity while moving his

or her internal interest to the necessary experiences in the path to adulthood. Therefore, in

Montessori instruction, the first intervention is to introduce the child to Montessori’s

materials. A demonstration of how to use these materials is the initial step. The work of

the child is to explore through interaction and experience in order to build new

knowledge, improve new or existing skills, or develop cognitive capacities waiting to

expand. His or her experience with the educational material is what helps the child

develop his or her intelligence. For Montessori, “to help the development of the

intelligence is to help to put the images of the consciousness in order” (Montessori, 1917,

p. 202). A mind without order is one that has been passively filled with information.

Montessori compared these minds to “storehouses in which new objects are continually

deposited” (Montessori, 1917, p. 208).

The concept of order is what supports liberty. Order in the mind is reached

because knowledge has been acquired through experiences that demonstrate and validate

its functionality and the child’s situation in relation to previous or new knowledge. In

Montessori schools, children learn to choose, to prioritize, and to organize work. These

skills are critical in current societies, where information is available from an infinite

number of sources and can be accessed in just a fraction of a second. Technology

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integration in Montessori classrooms has the advantage of the support of a learning

system based on the child's intrinsic motivation. This allows children to recognize

technologies in their learning environment as tools that facilitate learning and not as

external rewards. The Montessori student is used to prioritizing. Therefore, the child

understands that these resources are not for playing, but are rather part of their daily,

valuable work materials. Moreover, Montessori students are habituated to actively

participate in their learning process. For instance, in the classroom area assigned to

language, children who are learning to read work with mobile alphabets, which they use

to compose, read, and write words. Small environments, such as miniature farms, are

among the materials used by small children to read labels and classify nouns. The

decimal system and its operations are learned using materials that represent the units 10,

100, and 1,000. From this concrete approach, children move to more abstract materials

for the same and more complicated operations, using multiple senses in the learning

process. It is very common in a Montessori classroom to observe a child pairing up

images with labels and small descriptions. Likewise, this learning practice can be

observed through the entire curriculum, which strengthens the reading and writing

processes through areas such as biology, history, and geography. Paivio’s (1971) dual

coding theory supports and validates Montessori instructional practices of using different

senses during learning and is discussed in the next section.

Dual Coding theory

Information processing theory describes human learning as an interaction between

long- and short-term memories. Learning depends on how effective the interactions

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between these two memories are in terms of transferring relevant information to the long-

term memory and accessing this information when needed (Lohr & Gall, 2008). Paivio’s

(1991) dual coding theory expands general information processing theory by considering

that information can be stored in different forms. Paivio proposed that information was

stored in verbal or nonverbal ways. Nonverbal memory is described as an imaging system

because it is an area where sensed information is analyzed and where mental images are

generated (Paivio, 1991, p. 54). This memory does not depend only on sight; it can

receive visual and auditory information as well. Verbal memory manages the storage and

processing of language information and the generation of speech (Paivio, 1980).

Furthermore, these memories are structurally located in different areas of the brain and

can function independently (Paivio, 1991). This independence implies that perceptual and

language activities can be observed alone (Paivio, 1980). Nevertheless, each of these

memories can activate the other, as well as transfer and convert information from one to

the other.

In addition, Paivio (1980) defined three levels of processing information: the

representational, referential, and associative levels. The representational level involves

the activation of the long-term memory by a corresponding stimulus. For example, a

word may activate a verbal representation. The referential level involves the activation of

representations in one system by another through their interconnection (Paivio, 1980), as

happens when generating a mental image to name something or when naming an image.

The associative level refers to connections among linguistic and image units, such as the

use of an image stored in the long-term memory to identify or learn a new word that does

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not necessarily represent the same thing. The associative level is important in the process

of learning abstract words such as fearlessness. When using images or sound, a person

can create a representation of the word or connect its meaning to previous units of

information stored in long-term memory.

Farley et al. (2012) highlighted the contribution of imagery to the process of

vocabulary learning. Vocabulary meaning retention is essential for understanding any

second language. In particular, Farley et al. took the case of remembering concrete versus

abstract words. In an attempt to demonstrate the effectiveness of using images, they

employed symbolic, metaphorical, or emotive imagery to support meaning retention of

abstract vocabulary items. Their sample consisted of 160 students enrolled in a first-

semester Spanish course. These students did not have a background in Spanish, nor had

they taken any Spanish courses before the intervention. Passive interaction with content

was required from the learner only to maintain attention on the screens. In Farley et al.

(2012), students with image interventions outperformed those without the images in

learning abstract words. However, results were mostly not statistically significant.

Nevertheless, these results suggest the value of introducing assisting visual elements in

learning abstract and concrete vocabulary. It is important to mention that, in both cases,

students’ long-term knowledge showed a significant decrease, possibly as a result of the

learner’s passive role in the learning process. The results of this study need repetition,

and similar research should be performed with different age ranges.

The amount of information that can be retained in working memory is limited.

Therefore, the possibility of overload needs to be considered (Mayer & Moreno, 1998).

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When overload occurs, the learner’s capacity for processing information is not sufficient

for the total processing demand (Mayer & Moreno, 2003). Conversely, meaningful

learning occurs when a learner is capable of archiving relevant information, accessing it

when needed, and using it comprehensibly to establish new learning connections.

However, additional conditions need to be taken into consideration. For instance, the

connections between storages can be made only if both pictorial and verbal information is

present in the working memory at the same time (Mayer & Moreno, 1998). Evoking an

image to connect to a language code or vice versa can enable this process. Similarly,

using an auditory or visual stimulus when learning a language might create effective

learning conditions.

Montessori (1965) was aware that presenting information both visually and

verbally contributed positively to the child’s learning process. Indeed, in Montessori

pedagogy, grammar is taught through concrete symbols with specific qualities that are

presented to children in order to help them understand the function of words in sentences.

Further, throughout the entire curriculum, information is normally presented with images

and text simultaneously. Current educational technologies allow the development of these

pedagogical practices by facilitating instant integration of audio, video, and images into

the learning process. They have the potential to make the learning process more

meaningful when students are allowed to create their own relevant learning tools while

using them. Consider cellular phones and how simple taking a picture or a video and

sharing it with friends or families has become.

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Literacy Versus Reading

Reading is the interpretation of something that is printed. Literacy is a person’s

capacity for reading and writing. Snow (1998) defined literacy as broader and more

specific than reading. Reading is only a part of a person’s literacy capacity. Educational

background, culture, environment, and social context influence a person’s literacy

potential. Therefore, when referring to literacy, there is a broad scope of additional

knowledge that needs to be taken into consideration. Snow referred to this additional

knowledge as fundamental in order to understand, for example, a dissertation on quantum

physics. Therefore, reading capacity is not enough for literacy; there is additional

knowledge that will be influenced by many internal and external variables required to

understand what is being read. Nevertheless, reading development is one of the most

important elements of literacy and it represents one of the greatest challenges for human

development. Even though children have a sensitive period for language acquisition,

learning to read and dominating the skills needed to read fluently and to understand what

is being read takes many years of practice and hard work. This is true for L1 learners and

ESL learners.

English as a Second Language (ESL) Learners and Reading Development

The U.S. Department of Education considered ESL learners as those who

represent nation-origin-minority-groups who are limited-English-proficient (Francis et

al., 2008). These groups come from different cultural backgrounds and their first

languages differ significantly. This differentiation in previous knowledge, culture, and

first language influences the processes of learning a second language (Gutierrez, 2010;

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Lesaux et al., 2008). This literature review is mostly related to individuals whose primary

language is Spanish, due to the targeted population for this study.

Gutierrez (2010) described the Common Underlying Proficiency (CUP) model,

which supports the existence of a rapid transfer of acquired skills from one language to

another. Manis, Lindsey, and Bailey (2004) investigated cross language transfer from

Spanish to English. They wanted to test if significant cross language relationships should

be found between print knowledge, phonological awareness, and rapid automatic naming

(Manis et al., 2004). Manis et al. initial sample consisted of 303 Latino kindergarten

children from a Texas border town participating of a district wide early-transition

bilingual curriculum called “Esperanza”. This program begins in kindergarten with

phonological awareness activities, letter introduction, and oral language training in both

Spanish and English. The program continues until second grade. A battery of tests was

administered in kindergarten, first, and second grade to measure variables such as letter

knowledge, word identification, sentence recall, confrontation naming, phonological

awareness, and print concepts (Manis et al., 2004). Manis et al. stated that there is

transference of skills from Spanish speakers to their English learning processes.

Significant and moderately sized correlations were found between Spanish measures in

kindergarten and parallel English measures in first graders. Manis et al. demonstrated that

a variety of theoretically important skills can be measured in Spanish and can be used to

predict future reading achievements in English. Additional empirical evidence suggests

that the processes and strategies for acquiring reading skills in a second language are

similar to those for acquiring reading skills in a first language (Carlo et al., 2008; Francis

29

et al., 2006; Gottardo & Mueller, 2009; Gutierrez, 2010). These advantages can be

attributed to some similarities between both languages, English and Spanish. For

example, both languages are alphabetical. In alphabetical languages words are composed

of characters from a finite set or alphabet. Nonalphabetic languages, for example,

Chinese, symbols represent syllables instead of phonemes. In addition, in English and

Spanish reading is done from left to right. Another simple similarity is on many words

(such as conclusion and ‘conclusión’), which are written very similarly and share the

same definition.

The main differences observed between L1 learners and ESL learners are

primarily associated to vocabulary knowledge and, consequently, reading comprehension

(Biemiller, 2005; Carlo et al., 2006; Gottardo & Mueller, 2009; Lesaux et al., 2010).

Biemiller (2005) claimed that in fifth grade ESL learners have an average vocabulary size

of a third grade L1 speaker. Some of the explanations for this gap include poor oral

language exposure from ESL learners at their close environments, such as their home or

playing areas. Additionally, the primary focus in lower elementary grades is decoding

skills, more than vocabulary learning. Nonetheless, for both native speakers and ESL

learners the process of developing numerous proficiencies associated with reading is a

complex task that involves an assorted number of cognitive resources.

The act of reading involves a combination of interconnected abilities and the

development and maintenance of a motivation. The effective combination of these

abilities determines a person’s capacity to understand what is being read. Some of these

abilities include the knowledge to understand how phonemes (units of sound that can

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change meaning) are connected to print, the ability to decode unfamiliar words, the

ability to read fluently, sufficient background information, sufficient vocabulary to foster

reading comprehension, and strategies to construct meaning from print (The No Child

Left Behind Act). These five elements of reading are embedded on the Snow (1998)

proposition about what constitutes an effective reading program. Snow believed the most

important predictors of success and failure in reading are “intellectual and sensory

capacities, positive expectations about and experiences with literacy from an early age,

support for reading related activities and attitudes, and instructional environments

conducive to learning” (Snow, 1998, p. 101). Further predictors are knowledge of letter-

sound relationship, vocabulary, reading comprehension strategies, and motivation

(Becker, 1977; Chall et al., 1990; Chall & Conard, 1991; Francis et al., 2008; Lesaux &

Kieffer, 2010; National Institute for Literacy, 2001; Scarborough, 2001; Silverman &

Crandall, 2010; Snowling & Hulme, 2011; Spira et al., 2005; Storch & Whitehouse,

2002).

There are two theoretical frameworks that intend to explain the reading process.

One is the Simple View Reading Model, which states that word reading ability (decoding)

and listening comprehension account for nearly all the variance in the understanding of

what is being read (Gough & Tunmer, 1986). However, Joshi and Aaron (2000) argued

that the Simple View Model does not take into consideration important variables such as

those related to the child’s familiar environment and his interactions with the elements of

these environments. Therefore, Joshi and Aaron (2000) expanded the Simple View Model

to what they called the Componential Model of Reading. In this model decoding is an

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element of sight-word reading which is the combination of decoding skills and fluency.

Reading will be the result of decoding, speed (fluency), and reading comprehension skills

(Joshi & Aaron, 2012). In both models word reading skills are the foundation in which

the child can construct meaning. Likewise, decoding skills such as phonemic awareness

and phonics (relating spelling to speech sound) are more influential in the reading process

during the first years of the child language development (Francis et al., 2006). Decoding

skills or letter sound relationships (phonemic awareness, phonological awareness,

phonics, phonological decoding) encloses a group of language proficiencies critical to the

initial stages of the reading process. In early childhood, decoding is the real challenge and

will be the greatest determinant of a child’s ability to pronounce and read a word

regardless of his/her understanding of its meaning (Francis et al., 2006; Snow, 1998).

According to Snowling and Hulme (2011) two of the three main characteristics of a

skilled reader are the ability to decode accurately, and to read fluently. Geva and Farnia

(2012) evaluated the development of reading fluency and language proficiency in a

sample of 390 ESL, and 149 L1 speakers. Their results demonstrated that from second

grade to fifth grade word reading accuracy and fluency evolved from being one measure

to being two independent factors. In fifth grade, fluency has a more significant role on

reading comprehension than accuracy. It is noteworthy that in fifth grade syntactic skills

and listening comprehension were identified as additional language proficiency

components for reading comprehension in ESL learners although not for L1 speakers.

These results suggests that predicting factors for reading comprehension in ESL learners

are not identical to L1 speakers and there might be additional variables that should be

32

considered in order to understand upper elementary reading comprehension for ESL

learners. In addition, apparently a change occurs in the child's educational needs where

decoding is no longer a limitation allowing new necessities to be noticed. Research

suggest these needs cannot be observed before because teacher's and child’s attention is

directed toward overcoming reading decoding challenges, overlooking the need for

vocabulary acquisition (Geva & Farnia, 2012; Mancilla-Martinez & Lesaux, 2010,

Lesaux & August, 2006; Snowling & Hulme, 2011; Lesaux & Kieffer, 2010; Silverman

& Crandall, 2010; Spira et al., 2005). This is specially observed in ESL children, whose

language spoken at home usually limits their acquisition of English vocabulary. Most of

the studies related to reading development for ESL learners are focused on decoding

processes in lower elementary grades (from kindergarten to third grade). It may appear

that children need to overcome decoding conflicts in order to improve their language

development in upper elementary. That is why, decoding skills are predictors of upper

elementary reading and comprehension capacities. Decoding skills development has been

widely studied for the creation of reading programs that contribute to children’s future

reading progress through the educational system. For example, Nakamoto, Lindsey and

Manis (2012) evaluated the development reading and oral language skills in 502 ESL

learners from kindergarten to third grade whose first language was Spanish. The children

followed one of three different intervention programs: a transitional bilingual, a dual-

language, and an English immersion program. In the transitional bilingual program

instruction was given in both Spanish and English. Each year children’s Spanish

instructional time was gradually reduced. Children in this program were taught to read

33

and write initially in Spanish. In the dual-language program children were taught some

topics in Spanish and some in English in equal proportions. Science and social studies

were taught in Spanish and math was taught in English. Children in the English

immersion program were placed in classrooms with predominantly English proficient

peers and were offered all-English instruction. In Nakamoto et al. the student’s level of

participation in the program was significantly associated with their mean level of

performance in their reading and oral language measures. Students in the transitional

bilingual and dual-language programs scored significantly higher than those in the

English immersion program on the Spanish oral language decoding and reading

comprehension measures. Similarly, program participants with more exposure to English

had better results in English language skills. Also, Nakamoto et al. found that all the

regression paths for each grade measured did not vary across the programs. Therefore,

the predictors of reading comprehension in both languages did not vary either. Moreover,

the same measures can be applied to identify which children in the sample would have

reading compression difficulties in the future regardless of their language of instruction.

In addition, their results revealed that the decoding skills in first grade predicted reading

comprehension in third grade. Apparently, in subsequent grades these decoding skills

become less important due to, for instance, changes in the complexity of topics and

readings. Furthermore, once these decoding skills are beginning to be acquired they

become necessary tools to meet the demands of the academic grade.

Unlike the characteristics observed in lower elementary grades, such as the

importance of decoding skills, in upper and middle school vocabulary knowledge and

34

comprehension skills appear to be fundamental factors of reading. Kieffer (2012) used

data from a national-representative longitudinal database on a cohort of ESL learners

whose first language is Spanish in the US, to investigate to what degree English and

Spanish language competence serves as a predictor of reading skills in elementary and

middle school years. Kieffer (2012) observed that vocabulary measures were statistically

the finest predictors in upper and middle grade levels of English reading. English learning

in upper elementary grades demands effective vocabulary acquisition practices.

Although most studies strongly related vocabulary knowledge to reading

comprehension, it is important to consider special conditions where evidence proved

otherwise (Flanigan, Templeton, & Hayes, 2012; Harrison, 2011; Logan, 2011;

Montgomery & Hayes, 2005; Nagy, Berninger, & Abbott, 2006; Steele & Watkins, 2010;

Wanzek, Wexler, Vaughn, & Ciullo, 2010). Mancilla-Martinez and Lesaux (2010)

conducted a longitudinal study with a population of ESL learners whose first language is

Spanish from low-income households, classified as low achieving struggling readers.

Students were followed for a period of six years, until their fifth grade. Mancilla-

Martinez and Lesaux (2010) use longitudinal structural equation models of latent growth

curves to develop a model of English reading comprehension. This analytic approach

allowed them to link the children’s initial status for vocabulary and word reading at age

4.5 to English reading comprehension achievement at age 11. Mancilla-Martinez and

Lesaux (2010) found that Spanish vocabulary and word reading path were not significant

predictors of English reading comprehension. All throughout their model word reading

was more strongly associated with reading comprehension measures than with

35

vocabulary. Although both factors were influential, the study results demonstrated that

word reading exerted a greater influence on comprehension outcomes than vocabulary at

age (Mancilla-Martinez & Lesaux, 2010). However, for Mancilla-Martinez and Lesaux

the level of reading development of these children was extremely low even in fifth grade,

for this reason, in this study word reading influenced reading comprehension more

significantly than vocabulary knowledge. Also, their decoding skills were deficient;

consequently, vocabulary skills were not as influential as expected.

Nevertheless, there is empirical evidence that vocabulary knowledge and

strategies to learn vocabulary influence the continual improvement of fluency in addition

to being critical for reading comprehension in L1 speakers and ESL learners (Lesaux et

al., 2010; Riedel, 2007; Schilling, Carlisle, Scott, & Zeng, 2007; Yovanoff, Duesbery, &

Alonzo, 2005). For example, Yovanoff et al. (2005) wanted to establish up to what

degree fluency and high-level vocabulary knowledge impact reading comprehension

ability as students progress each successive grade. In Yovanoff et al. linear regression

models were developed to predict if reading comprehension fluency has an impact on

vocabulary and vice versa. Yovanoff et al. expected that reading fluency would decrease

as a predictor of reading comprehension primarily because students show increasing

mastery of these skills, resulting in less predictive value. Meanwhile, vocabulary will be

more important because knowledge acquisition requires increasingly greater vocabulary

as a function of grade level. Yovanoff et al. results proved that reading comprehension is

related to developmental factors and is a multidimensional process. In terms of the

developmental factor, in elementary grades fluency is most important because it connects

36

the alphabetic principles and consolidates phonemes and graphemes. As students become

more skilled on fluency, texts are increasingly difficult, in part because they demand

understanding of the meaning of more complex words. Schilling et al. (2007) wanted to

investigate the validity of fluency measures as predictors of early elementary students’

reading achievement. Similar to Yovanoff et al. study, Schilling et al. found diminutions

in the magnitude of correlations between the fluency measures and reading

comprehension from second to third grade. Thus concluding that fluency might be less

closely associated with comprehension as students gain experience (and fluency) reading

connected text, perhaps because of the increasing importance of other factors such as

vocabulary knowledge (Schilling et al., 2007). In Schilling et al. Dynamic Indicators of

Basic Early Literacy Skills (DIBELS) were validated as predictors of fluency measures.

Schilling et al. gathered data from 44 schools from nine districts, testing children from

first through third grade during the fall, winter, and spring. Their results demonstrated the

DIBELS at-risk benchmarks for oral reading fluency were mostly accurate identifying

second and third graders who were reading below the 25th percentile at the end of the

year. However, the test could not predict reading levels for many of the second and third

graders. Schilling et al. suggested supplementing DIBELS measures with measurements

of reading comprehension and vocabulary. Thus, vocabulary measures are suggested for

reading assessment in second and third grades, that is, in more advanced ages, where

decoding elements are not the only factor influencing the reading process. Profiling ESL

children might help to develop effective assessment tools and interventions for upper

elementary children.

37

In order to define a possible profile for ESL children in upper elementary, Lesaux

and Kieffer (2010) compared, under the same pedagogical context, ESL learners with L1

struggling readers. The study sample was composed of 263 children with an average age

of 12 years old and under the 35th percentile in the assessment reading comprehension

test. Using multiple evaluation tools Lesaux and Kieffer assessed word-level reading

skills and oral language measures. They observed that both groups showed comparable

and similar sources of difficulties. Lesaux and Kieffer (2010) profiles suggested that L1

children with reading difficulties and ESL learners by middle schools have fairly good

decoding skills, but a significant deficiency in vocabulary skills. This suggests that by

middle school both groups would benefit from the same instructional approaches.

Therefore, vocabulary instruction programs should be developed with the goal of its latter

implementation in mainstream classrooms of both L1 speakers and ESL learners.

Following this lead, Lesaux et al. (2010) found that native speakers and ESL

learners perform at similar levels to L1 speakers on measures of phonological processing,

word reading and spelling. They followed 87 students from fourth to sixth grades. When

compared they observed that in fourth grade and sixth grades vocabulary and listening

comprehension skills were the main predictors of reading comprehension. Essentially,

vocabulary acquisition and reading comprehension are skills that need to be developed in

more advanced stages of learning language for ESL learners and L1 speakers (Lesaux &

Kieffer, 2010; Swanson, Rosston, Gerber, & Solari, 2008). Swanson et al. (2008) used a

battery of measures in low-income Latino third grade children from two different schools

to investigate the role of vocabulary and grammatical skills in children who are learning

38

English as a second language. They consider phonological measures, reading measures,

oral language measures and syntax measures. Their results showed that oral language,

syntax and vocabulary, when compare to phonological awareness measures, contributed

substantially to reading skills in their third grade sample. They also demonstrated that at

third grade, even children learning English as a second language have acquired decoding

and word identification skills.

Vocabulary Instruction

Vocabulary acquisition is an academic challenge for L1 speakers, and more so to

ESL learners. During a child first years of development vocabulary gains are attributed

mostly to oral language communication. Oral language communication skills are those

related to the child’s vocabulary for communication and to his/her listening

comprehension capacity (Lesaux et al., 2010). Therefore, while in early education

children learn decoding, vocabulary is primarily learned at home or by their interaction

with the school environments and their peers (Biemiller, 2005). In most of ESL learners’

home environments oral communication skills are developed only for their first language.

Even though there is empirical evidence of a transmission process from Spanish first

language to English second language, this is not enough and these circumstances present

a challenge to teachers and learners. As the child progresses academically vocabulary

demands increases to understand the texts studied through the entire curriculum in

addition to the essentials of oral communication skills, reading fluency development, and

grammar understanding. Snow and Kim (2007) estimate that high-school English only

graduates need to learn 75,000 English words between the ages of 2 and 17. According to

39

Biemiller (2003) learning vocabulary is so critical that an average child should learn

between 800 and 900 root words a year. The problem seems to be that from kindergarten

to third grade children are learning mostly to decode, which is the basis for reading

development. While decoding skills could be learned in a period of two-years, vocabulary

instruction is a never-ending effort (Biemiller, 2003). The challenges of determining

vocabulary goals per grade increases with ESL population due to the evident lack of

exposure to oral language communication. Nation (2006) proposed the estimation of the

quantity of words needed in order to comprehend certain texts such as newspapers and

novels. Based on previous studies (Hu & Nation, 2000), Nation presented that 98% of

text coverage words would be needed for most learners to gain adequate comprehension

(Hu & Nation, 2000). Nation wanted to determine the amount of vocabulary needed to

reach a comprehension of a variety of written text and spoken communication. He found

that the ideal vocabulary knowledge to manage most written text is between 8,000 to

9,000 word-families. However, the largest variation in vocabulary occurs mainly in the

first 1,000 word-families and proper names. According to Nation (2006) these word-

families allow a high percentage of understanding of a reading. Consequently, the greater

educational effort should be on those first 1,000 word-families. Furthermore, distinctions

needed to be taken into consideration within these word-families. Miller and Roodenrys

(2012) studied word frequency. They divided vocabulary into low frequency (LF) and

high frequency (HF) words. Word frequency is the amount of times a word can be

encountered in written or spoken language (Miller & Roodenrys, 2012). Miller and

Roodenrys (2012) observed that HF words are learned more rapidly than LF. However,

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the best results were observed when both word lists were mixed. Therefore, it is not just

the word frequency which facilitates its learning, the context or in Miller and Roodenrys

study, the list in which it is presented that determines how effectively it is recalled.

Therefore, Miller and Roodenrys suggested presenting words in a combination where HF

words appear initially followed with LF words. They propose HF words might serve as a

resource for the recall of the following LF words.

Learning vocabulary effectively depends on the contextual knowledge about the

word being learned (Stahl, 2003). However, contextual knowledge about the word is not

enough since its relationship to other words and its transformations into morphological

forms would allow the reader to understand and learn additional related words and to

interact more effectively with the text (Lesaux et al., 2010). Several strategies to support

vocabulary knowledge development have been proposed throughout the literature. One of

these is introducing word through explanations in an informal language instead of using

the dictionary (Beck & McKeown, 2007; Carlo et al., 2008; Mancilla-Martinez &

Lesaux, 2010). When using commonly encountered vocabulary to introduce a definition

the child can connect the word more easily to previous knowledge. Once a definition is

presented, different contexts where the word can be used are explored. This increases the

opportunities of the reader to comprehend the word meaning depending on the

circumstance where it is used (Beck & McKeown, 2007; Carlo et al., 2008; Mancilla-

Martinez & Lesaux, 2010; Stahl, 2003; Stahl & Nagy, 2006). Knowledge of the word in

different contexts opens an opportunity for the child to participate of activities that

provide immediate contact with the words (Beck & McKeown, 2007; Biemiller, 2003;

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Carlo et al., 2008; Mancilla-Martinez & Lesaux, 2010) and that can take the child to

deeper and mindful interactions with the vocabulary (Beck & McKeown, 2007; Carlo et

al., 2008; Lesaux et al., 2010; Mancilla-Martinez & Lesaux, 2010). Lastly, intrinsic

motivation has an important role in vocabulary learning (Kirby, 2007; National Reading

Panel, 2000; Shany & Biemiller, 2010; Snow, 1998). Readings should be relevant to the

students and should draw their attention and interest. The importance or relevance of

readings in the reality of the reader, allows them to identify and interact with what they

read. For example, situations or problems in readings presented to students should be

similar to their reality so that they achieve empathy and increase meaningful interaction

with the text (Ebe, 2012). Lack of motivation affects the student's ability to concentrate

on and to effectively delve into a reading. This causes reading to become an unintelligible

torture. Ebe (2012) presents evidence that when students have previous experiences with

the topics of a text, comprehension can be achieved more fully. Culturally relevant texts

allow a connection between the reader’s background knowledge and the reading (Ebe,

2012). In Ebe’s study four students participated of the intervention. Each student reads

one culturally relevant book and one not relevant. In this study the four participants

achieved better reading comprehension of the cultural relevant text (Ebe, 2012). It is

possible that these connections have an engaging factor and at the same time includes a

greater amount of vocabulary known to the reader. However, further research on this

matter should be conducted with a greater sample size.

In addition to word frequency, another distinction in vocabulary learning is breadth

versus depth. Breadth vocabulary refers to the number of words known and depth

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vocabulary is the multiple representations of known words (Proctor et al., 2009). A

common practice in teaching vocabulary is presenting a list of words to the students from

the reading they are going to make. Students must look for the words on a dictionary;

write their definitions and sentences with them in index cards. Proctor et al. (2009)

argued this practice would be more beneficial if the definition agrees with the word

context. Consequently, Proctor et al. claimed that effective vocabulary programs to

improve reading comprehension are contextually rich, attentive to establishing deep

meaning connections, and extended in time to provide multiple encounters with each

word. Therefore, to maximize results in reading comprehension due to vocabulary

learning it is not enough to learn many words, instead, it is more significant to increase

richness of vocabulary knowledge (Proctor et al., 2009). To corroborate these theories

Proctor et al. explored the use of a multimedia environment to promote learning of depth

and breadth vocabulary. Particularly, they wanted to study semantic depth, which is

another component of vocabulary knowledge that refers to the ability to express and

connect word meaning across a variety of contexts as well as to identify how words are

connected to one another in this network (Proctor et al., 2009). Proctor et al. believed

semantic depth contributes importantly to reading comprehension in upper elementary. A

total of 35 fifth graders were selected for this study. The sample was divided into 24

bilingual and 11 monolingual students. Students were exposed to a media environment

that promoted deep study of vocabulary. However, student interaction was limited to

answering questions after viewing the different activities. According to Proctor et al., oral

language skills and semantic depth accounted the most for reading comprehension on the

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sample. Proctor et al. study showed no conclusive results due to a small sample size, in

order to confirm his results replication of the study is required. Additionally, the sample

was not homogeneous since native language varied, for some it was Mandarin while for

the others it was Spanish. Although Proctor et al. (2009) used a multimedia environment,

student’s participation was primarily passive. In educational technology, the level of

interaction with the resources influences the educational outcome significantly (Mouza,

2008). Therefore, although a multimedia environment can provide contextually rich

spaces where learners can establish deep meaning connections, the student’s active role

continues to be of extreme importance and needs to be considered. In any active learning

activity the student’s participation allows the cognitive creation of multiple connections

in order to have a deeper or strong learning process. For example, through a multimedia

environment such as a video, with which students can associate sound, letters and images

to learn new vocabulary, there can be connections made between the definition, the

sounds, animations and the word. Moreover, if the student is the one who gathers the

images, the sounds, and even creates a video, the learning process is amplified and the

neurological connection could also be maximized. Therefore, educational technologies

are able to enhance students’ second language learning by creating multiple channels to

connect knowledge and by allowing students to be the active creators of these channels

and connections. Another example is the use of virtual worlds as learning tools for

language learning or improvement. Virtual worlds or MUVES (multi user virtual

environments) are computer-generated environments created with multiple technologies

that allow their participants to interrelate with elements of a real world society

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(Balcikanli, 2012). In this type of environment students can use the technology to

facilitate learning experiences and to play an active role in the process.

In order to gain insights on this matter, Balcikanli (2012) explored the

experiences of English as Foreign Language (EFL) learners and Turkish as Foreign

Language (TFL) learners with the virtual world platform Second Life. Balcikanli was

only interested in the students’ experiences in the virtual world. Therefore, no

experimental procedures were taken into consideration. The population of the study was a

convenience sample and language-learning gain was not measured in any standardized

form. Balcikanli used semi-structured interviews to gather the qualitative data. This study

consisted of two groups of seven American learners studying Turkish in the U.S. and

eight Turkish EFL learners who studied English in Turkey at college level. Second Life is

a virtual 3D community where participants can interact with each other and with the

virtual environments. The students had the opportunity to share information and play

within the Second Life platform while having to manage the interactions in the new

language they were trying to learn. Each student, in both groups, had to spend thirty

minutes on practicing Turkish and then thirty minutes on practicing English. Both groups

had to spend two hours a week in Second Life. Aside from the challenges reported by the

students and related to the learning process of using Second Life, the students were

positive toward the use of this type of learning environment to improve their language

skills. Balcikanli concluded that the majority of the students felt quite relieved in Second

Life. In both groups, at the beginning the students felt anxious for the opportunity, then

they entered into a confusion state, not being clear of what to talk about, and finally they

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went into an excitement stage. The virtual world experience was the closest thing to a

context of immersion in the languages they were studying, which can prove to be very

difficult when learning a language far away from a culture that speaks it.

Finally, it is important to consider the differences between concrete and abstract

words. Sadoski (2005) claimed concrete words were less difficult than abstract words

because they can be represented easily in two codes (visual and nonvisual). The word

‘boat’ can be represented by an image and by narration of its function. However, it is

more difficult to represent with pictures the word ‘hope’. Furthermore, in some cases

word meaning can be connected directly to multiple verbal and nonverbal symbols

(Sadoski, 2005). For example, the word ‘ring’ can be connected to wedding, boxing,

burglary or telephony. Consequently, when selecting words to be learned it is important

to consider how they might be connected to concrete or abstract ideas in order to improve

learning outcomes. Even so, the use of technologies such as videos to represent abstract

concepts might be a pedagogical option to facilitate the representation of meaning or to

construct meaning or introduce other proven effective language learning strategies such

as concept mapping. In fact, learning countless science concepts can be a challenge

mainly because of their level of abstraction. Hwang, Wu and Kuo (2013) studied the

effects of different touch technology-based concept-mapping strategies on the learning

attitudes and learning achievements of 92 sixth grade students (12-13 years old) in a

natural science course. The treatment groups used concept map creation with some

technology and the control group had a paper-and-pencil concept-mapping approach.

Hwang et al. (2013) used a scale for measuring the students’ attitudes toward the natural

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science course, and a questionnaire of the student’s acceptance of the concept-mapping

approach. They found that the students in the treatment groups adopted better learning

attitudes toward the use of concept maps for science learning than those of the control

group after their interaction with the technology. Their results showed that the students in

the treatment group had a significantly more positive perception of the usefulness of

concept maps for learning than the control group (Hwang et al., 2013). Therefore, the use

of technology to address a strategy to learn science concepts was significantly beneficial

to the learning process and to keep students engaged in the process. In another similar

study, Mellecker, Witherspoon, and Watterson (2013) demonstrated that the experience

of students and teachers using active gaming technology to acquire nutritional knowledge

was positive and enriching. A total of 57 students in grades 3, 4, and 5 participated of this

study. Although this study did not have a control group to compare with the pre and

posttest score of the students showed learning improvements in each grade level and on

the overall average. Mellecker et al. study is preliminary and needs further experimental

exploration, but the online nutrition games proved to be a positive pedagogical practice.

In addition to the pre and posttests, children made journals about their experience during

these learning activities. This qualitative data showed students were aware of their

learning process and they used the new acquired knowledge to make nutritional decisions

(Mellecker et al., 2013).

Considering research recommendations regarding vocabulary learning, Lesaux et

al. (2010) developed a complete program for teaching vocabulary. They wanted to

determine the impact of their vocabulary program in reading comprehension in ESL

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Spanish learners enrolled in an urban middle school. Lesaux et al. program targeted depth

vocabulary knowledge and words with high academic utility while using direct

instruction and word learning strategies. Additionally, the program considered the use of

different activities that allowed multiple word exposure. The sample consisted of 476

sixth graders from which 346 were ESL and 130 were English native students. The

majority of the sample had Spanish as their first language. The intervention consisted of

teaching words in a series of activities during eight days. Starting with reading an article

that included the vocabulary, developing strategies for using and understanding the

vocabulary and, finally, using words to write under new contexts. The results showed a

small improvement of reading comprehension, which Lesaux et al. believed was due to

the assessment tool used in the study. Apparently, the test for reading comprehension did

not include the academic words learned during the program. Consequently, even though

the test showed an improvement it was not statistically significant for the sample. In

addition, ESL students remained behind L1 speakers in vocabulary and reading

comprehension, which implies that they might need a more intensive approach in more

individualized settings (Lesaux et al., 2010). Lesaux et al. vocabulary program

considered the most effective practices in language programs discussed by Slavin,

Cheung, Groff, and Lake (2008). Slavin et al. (2008) made a systematic review of

research on achievement outcomes for reading programs in middle and high schools

students. Slavin et al. (2008) found that the programs with the most effective results

where those that had a critical cooperative learning component, focused on improving

classroom teaching while changing the traditional practices in the classrooms. In

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addition, Slavin et al. demonstrated that curricula and computer-assisted programs alone

were as effective as these practices. Instead, mixed-methods models are expected to have

greater influence in student’s academic reading achievements. Consequently, it leaves

open the possibility that active engaging cooperative student interaction combined with

the use of multimedia environments increase vocabulary acquisition and reading

comprehension.

The role of vocabulary on reading comprehension for L1 and ESL learners has

been intensively studied, as shown above. However, there is seemingly a need for

additional research on effective instructional practices that support vocabulary

development in order to contribute to better text comprehension in upper elementary and

middle school grades. Multimedia technologies are promising tools as instructional

components in that they allow students to connect vocabulary; they increase their

exposure to multiple experiences with it; and they add an active interaction component

while linking the verbal code to the visual code. Multimedia studies have been conducted

mainly on college students who passively attend to the presentation of information.

Hence, there is a need for studying effective uses of multimedia technologies as

instructional tools for active vocabulary learning in upper elementary levels.

Multimedia Learning

Multimedia learning is the presentation or use of information with images

(pictures) and words to increase the effectiveness of the learning process (Mayer &

Moreno, 2003). Most of current informational and communicational technologies are an

opportunity for instructional multimedia development. These technologies offer multiple

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options to achieve multimedia instruction. However, it is critical to consider the induction

of cognitive overload in learners when information is presented with multiple multimedia

resources such as videos, text, audio, or animations. When a cognitive overload occurs,

the learner’s intended cognitive processing exceeds the learner’s available cognitive

capacity (Mayer & Moreno, 1998; Mayer & Moreno, 2003). A person’s total processing

demand in multimedia learning is directly proportional to his or her essential processing,

incidental processing and representational holding (Mayer & Moreno, 2003). Essential

processing is defined, as the capacity required for making sense of what is being

observed. Therefore, it includes the selection, classification, organization, and integration

of information (Mayer & Moreno, 2003, p. 45). Incidental processing refers to one that

takes place without the active attention of the learner; it takes place, for instance, when a

presentation has a background audio that is not essential to understand what is being

presented. Even though this processing does not require the same amount of processing

capacity that essential processing does, it still generates cognitive activities, which

influence the person’s cognitive capacity. Representational holding is the use of a visual

or auditory element to preserve a mental representation in the working memory during a

period of time (Mayer & Moreno, 2003). For example, a learner is presented with a slide

of an illustration, and in the next slide, with text related to that image. In this case the

learner has to retain the image in his short-term memory in order to make use of it when

the text is presented. If a multimedia learning resource has a total processing capacity

greater than the learner’s cognitive capacity then cognitive overload will probably occur.

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Consequently, arrangement of visual and auditory instructional resources has an

impact in the learning processes, specifically in the demand of a person’s cognitive work.

These theoretical considerations are evidenced by several studies, mostly on adults,

where multimedia instruction had presented contradictory results (Farley et al., 2012;

Rosen et al., 2012; Schwartz, 2005; Silverman & Hines, 2009). The results of these

studies will be presented in the following paragraphs. However, these results are

explained by cognitive overload variables. Understanding what is the most effective form

to present information and combine media objects are inquiries constantly made in

multimedia instruction. Mayer (2001) claims that students learn better from words and

pictures than from words alone. According to him the image is an element that allows

learners to create meaning and make sense of what they are learning. Mayer and Moreno

(2003) developed a set of principles to guide the creation of tools and activities that

integrate audio, text and visual technologies for learning. Among them, Mayer and

Moreno (2003) suggested transferring words as narration rather than as on-screen text,

using learner-controlled segments rather than continuous units, excluding extraneous

material, placing printed words near corresponding parts of the graphics, reducing or

eliminating redundancy, and presenting narration and visual input simultaneously.

Therefore, research had concentrated on optimal combinations of learning objects to

stimulate learning without overloading individual’s cognitive capacities. The nature of

these considerations is cognitive overload, which I believe would not be a variable to

consider if students are the ones building the multimedia units during their process of

constructing meaning.

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Mayer and Moreno (1998) worked with 78 college students to study ways to

avoid cognitive overload when presenting multimedia information. In their study,

students were presented with animations of information about either the process of

lightning formation or the operation of the braking system of a car. Students were divided

into two groups. One group received an animation with concurrent narration of the

information (Group AN) and the other group had the animation with concurrent on-

screen text (Group AT). The difference between each group was in the way verbal

information was presented. Mayer and Moreno (1998) claimed that in Group AT students

would activate just the visual (an image and on-screen text) memory; thus, the cognitive

load in this group was only visual. While students in Group AN would be able to activate

both visual and auditory memories because cognitive load was divided among the visual

(an image) and auditory systems (the narration). Mayer and Moreno (1998) measured

student’s capacity to retain the information received and their ability to transfer this

information to other situations. They also measured through matching student’s learning

of vocabulary definitions. Students learning the process of lightning formation or those

learning the operation of a car's braking system by image and narration of text (Group

AN) outperformed their peers in image and on-screen groups significantly in the three

different assessment tools. Therefore, on Mayer and Moreno (1998) study, students’

learning achievement of sequential information was increased when the information was

presented in a combination of visual and auditory sources.

In a similar study, Schwartz (2005) considered auditory overload in 72 students

between the ages of 10 and 12 when presented with 22 slides of information. She

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measured students’ attention using phasic heart rate, tonic heart rate, and skin

conductance level. To determine student’s retrieval capacity of the information presented

Schwartz (2005) used the technique of free recall (participants have to tell everything

they remember without clues). Schwartz created 22 scenes using Flash technology to

present information about animals living on a fictional planet. Each of the lessons used in

the study had four segments and each segment represented four different delivery

combinations of animation and sound: no animation/no sound effect, animation/no sound

effect, no animation/sound effect, and animation/sound effect (Schwartz, 2005, p. 63).

Schwartz found the greatest learning achievements in the segments with animation and/or

sound compared to the segment with the no animation/no sound combination.

Rosen, Fullwood, Henley, and King (2012) modified Schwartz (2005) study by

loading the visual mode instead of the auditory mode. Rosen et al. tested 55

undergraduate college students learning vocabulary under three different conditions. The

first condition was to read a sentence in context; the second one, to observe a picture with

a narrated sentence; the third one was to experience a picture (visual and nonverbal), with

the embedded word (visual and verbal) while listening to a narrated (nonvisual and

verbal) in context sentence. In Rosen et al. the third group was the only one able to

transfer the studied words to new situations. In this group, the vocabulary presentation

using the combination of image, text, and narration facilitated deeper vocabulary

learning. Rosen et al. suggested the repetition of this study in different lower educational

levels such as elementary and middle school. According to these studies, in a passive

learning mode, integration of multimedia helpers facilitates learning. Despite this fact,

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none of them explores a more active role of students with the multimedia elements and

long-term learning results.

Similar attempts to study multimedia support of instructional strategies for

vocabulary learning have been done in L1 and ESL students (Silverman & Hines, 2009).

Silverman and Hines (2009) evaluate vocabulary learning in L1 and ESL children from

pre-kinder to second grade. In their study, oral in-classroom reading was complemented

with multimedia by presenting students with videos related to the reading topics during a

twelve-week intervention. The study sample consisted of 85 children distributed among

pre-kindergarten (15), kindergarten (28), first grade (25), and second grade (17). Using a

parent’s questionnaire children were classified as L1 or ESL. The final sample consisted

of 32% ESL and 68% L1. L1 students and ESL students were divided into two groups

each for a total of four groups (2 of L1 students and 2 of ESL students). Within the pairs

of groups, there was an enhanced multimedia group—which read stories for two days

and, in the third day, watched videos related to the stories—and a nonmultimedia

group—which read stories for three days and did not have access to the videos.

Silverman and Hines did not find significant statistical differences between the results for

both L1 children groups. However, in the ESL children groups a positive and significant

statistical effect was observed between the multimedia enhance group and the

nonmultimedia group. For example, under the nonmultimedia condition nonESL gained

the same number of points from pretest to posttest as nonESL in the media condition.

Conversely, ESLs in the multimedia condition gained about 17 points, whereas ESLs in

the nonmultimedia condition gained only about 11 points from pretest to posttests. The

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researchers believed L1 children had the necessary tools at this level to learn effectively

with and without the video support. However, the ESL children might acquire some of

these tools through video interaction. It may appear that these videos helped fill the gap

many ESL children have due to their poor exposure to English in their immediate home

environments. Nonetheless, the authors of this study do not explain the English

background of the children participating in the study. Additionally, this study needs

repetitions due to design issues in terms of sample size and language assessment tools.

Chai and Erlam (2008) observed similar results with 20 college students who

were native Chinese speakers learning English as a second language. The sample’s

average age was 22 and it was randomly divided into two groups. One group saw videos

with captions and the other group without captions. Chai and Erlam wanted to find

whether the combination of video and caption might lead to better learning and retention

of vocabulary and phrases. Furthermore, Chai and Erlam wanted to explore if the

inclusion of captions influenced students attention toward any of the multimedia elements

(caption, sound, or picture). Although no statistical significant difference was found,

students in the caption group scored higher on the reading comprehension assessment

than those in the noncaption group. Students reported that their attention shifted

significantly to the captions because this element helped them understand the narration

and the relation among images better. Chai and Erlam (2008) study supported the value

of integrating additional multimedia helpers.

Furthermore, Cohen and Johnson (2010) studied the acquisition of vocabulary by

L1 learning Hebrew. The sample consisted of 15 students, which were assigned randomly

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to three intervention conditions (word only with verbal presentation, picture paired with

vocabulary word, and student creation of a mental image of the presented word and their

drawing on paper of their mental image) (Cohen & Johnson, 2010). In general, Cohen

and Johnson (2010) did not find statistical significance between the three interventions.

Cohen and Johnson (2010) study had many limitations, such as the convenient sample,

the sample size and the fact that the selected group was used to learning vocabulary

because of their multilanguage education environment.

In a more specific study about effective combinations of learning objects in

multimedia instruction, Mayer and Scott (2012) studied the effect of animated human-

like pedagogical onscreen characters on college students learning processes in three

different experiments. They wanted to study whether the use of learning agents with

human-like characteristics have an influence in student learning outcomes. On the first

experiment, eighty-eight college students from the Psychology Subject Pool at the

University of California, Santa Barbara were recruited to participate in the study. Using a

between-subjects design—where participants can be part of the treatment group or the

control but not both—Mayer and Scott randomly divided the sample into three groups.

One group had a high embodiment with human voice, a second group had a low

embodiment with human voice, and the third group did not have an onscreen agent with

human voice. The difference in embodiment with human voice interaction was

introduced to explore cognitive overload by this element. After the intervention,

participants answered a questionnaire and completed a retention assessment tool in which

they had to explain what they were supposed to learn (Mayer & Scott, 2012). The results

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of this experiment showed that learners performed better in a transfer test when human-

like agents were present. This is defined as the embodiment effect (Mayer & Scott, 2012).

The embodied effect occurs when students learn better in the presence of human agents

because interaction with the agents triggers a social element that causes students to work

harder in making sense of the material (Mayer & Scott, 2012). However, a comparison

between the low embodiment with human voice and the nonhuman element groups

reflected no significant difference. Therefore, for these groups having the human element

on the screen made no significant difference. On their second experiment Mayer and

Scott wanted to study if the embodiment effect would be obtained independently of the

type of voice the agent on screen used. One of the voices was a machine-synthesized

voice and the other was a human voice. The assessment tools and the sample selection

were the same as in the first experiment. However, this time Mayer and Scott had four

treatment groups: high embodiment with human voice, low embodiment with human

voice, high embodiment with machine voice, and low embodiment with machine voice.

Mayer and Scott results in the second experiment showed that the high embodiment

group significantly outscored the low embodiment group when the agent spoke in human

voice but not when the agent spoke in machine voice. Mayer and Scott believed that the

machine voice was a negative social agent that affected the positive impact of the human

agent. Therefore, when considering this type of technology, one has to take into

consideration not only the possible element of cognitive overload but also the negative

social queues related to embodiment effects in computer technology. Nevertheless, in

both experiments the embodiment effect was observed when the onscreen agents were

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present and the students learned better in the multimedia presentation with an onscreen

human-voiced agent.

To Lin and Tseng (2012) the question was which was more effective, pictures or

videos, in learning difficult words. Their intervention consisted of three different

approaches to access word definition on a digital short story. One group would access the

definition only through text, a second group through both text and an image, and a third

one through the combination of text and a related video or short animation. Their sample

consisted of 88 seventh grade Chinese students learning English as a second language. In

order to compare the three groups Lin and Tseng used two different instruments as pre

and posttests. To access long-term learning, the posttest was administered twice,

immediately after the intervention and two weeks after. In this study the text-video group

outperformed the other two. Students not only reported having enjoyed more the learning

process but also showed significant improvement in their reading comprehension

compared to the text-only or text-image group. This study is different from the above

because the best performing group actively decided whether or not to use the video

associated with the lesson. In the studies presented above, participants passively received

information and no active learning was integrated. In Lin and Tseng study the videos and

images were not imposed in the learning process. On the contrary, students had the

participatory role to decide whether to use or not the multimedia element and up to what

degree they needed it. Therefore, an active role in the learning process was present during

the intervention. Studies like this one look to combine multimedia technologies

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effectively in order to maximize results and to understand the influence the role of the

learner might have on the effectiveness of the technology.

Similarly, Jung Won and Suhyun (2012) wanted to explore how best to combine

interactive whiteboards, podcast and digital storytelling to increase proficiencies on ESL

learners. In addition, Jung Won and Suhyun wanted to understand how participants

perceived the effectiveness of these technologies. They define an interactive whiteboard

as a “touch-sensitive devise that allows users to interact with digital material” (Won &

Suhyun , 2012, p.2). The integration of the three technologies was through the curriculum

and the summer program, not exclusively in one type of intervention as in studies

previously discussed. Jung Won and Suhyun developed a one-month intensive summer

English program were students had to learn vocabulary related to the body, community,

weather, and the world. Some of the activities used include reading, writing, and open

discussions. The study was implemented as a summer program for Korean ESL learners

in third and fourth grade that had less than a year living in the United States. The

selection of the groups was strictly based on their teachers’ experience integrating

technology into their classrooms. The final sample consisted of 11 students with limited

English proficiency. No comparison group was included on the study. The teacher used

video podcast for students to review daily lessons and complete homework assignments.

Each week students took a vocabulary pretest and at the end of the week they took a

posttest. Additionally, students had to complete a digital story-telling project using the

photo story program. Won and Suhyun found statistically significant improvement in

vocabulary acquisition and English proficiency in the students expose to these

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technologies. From the photo story assignment Jung Won and Suhyun concluded that

students gained significant opportunities to practice their new language through

researching, writing, and speaking. This study presented preliminary evidence that

effective implementation of educational technology contributes to improve English skills

in ESL learners. However, generalizations and causality effects of the implementation

cannot be considered due to the methodology selected by Jung Won and Suhyun.

Another approach is to study asynchronous Computer Assisted Language

Programs (CALL) as effective learning tools. Gorjian, Moosvaina, Kavari, Asgari and

Hydarei (2011) study the efficiency of a CALL program to help ESL adults between the

ages of 18 to 40 improve their English vocabulary acquisition and pronunciation. The

CALL program allowed them to hear words pronunciation and observe images or videos

related to the word definition. Adults using the CALL program showed a significant

improvement in their English proficiency compared to groups not exposed to this

program. In a similar approach, but considering the active role of the student in the

learning process, Türk and Erçetin (2014) wanted to investigate the effects of student’s

active role in their process of selecting the multimedia technology to improve their

reading comprehension and vocabulary learning. Türk and Erçetin believed that students

with the opportunity to interact with the display condition would be more eager to

participate because having control would increase their interest in learning content. The

study was conducted with participants between 15 and 16 years old attending a high

school in Turkey. This group of 82 students had been learning ESL for at least six years.

Türk and Erçetin used reading text with multimedia glosses to track and record students’

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interaction with the text, multiple-choice test to measure reading performance, and

unannounced vocabulary test to measure incidental vocabulary learning. The results

indicated that students exposed to the interactive display condition had less activity using

the multimedia elements than the simultaneous group. The simultaneous groups accessed

the multimedia resources more frequently and spent more time viewing them (Türk and

Erçetin, 2014). Although both groups showed an improvement in their language skills

while being in contact with the multimedia resources, the group that received, the verbal

and visual information, had better performance.

The studies discussed present evidence of the possible effects adopting

multimedia may have in learning, including in the study of vocabulary instruction.

However, each has different targets in terms of the population studied, the developmental

age of the population and their academic needs. The need to explore in more detail the

use of multimedia in vocabulary learning for both L1 and ESL learners is clear.

Furthermore, none of these studies significantly explores the use of these technologies by

the student in the construction of meaning and the effect this active role might have in

long-term vocabulary recollection. Nonetheless, the integration of these technological

tools must go hand in hand with the existing theories about reading development,

vocabulary acquisition and reading comprehension in L1 and ESL learners. The

following section provides a general understanding of the development process of

reading, vocabulary learning, and reading comprehension, in an attempt to better

understand the scope of learning ESL for Spanish speakers and how to integrate

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multimedia technologies to enhance this process. Pedagogical practices and other studies

with ESL learners will be presented.

Current Study

Different approaches have been shown to be effective for improving vocabulary

in L1 and ESL learners. However, there is a need for further research on which strategies

using multimedia learning may be most effective to improve vocabulary learning in upper

elementary and especially with ESL learners. The present study used a variation of

Lesaux et al. (2010) Academic Language Instruction for All Students (ALIAS)

instructional vocabulary program to incorporate multimedia-learning activities that foster

children’s active experiences with vocabulary. This variation pretends to answer two

research questions using fourth to sixth grade native Spanish speakers as participants: 1)

Does adding an active multimedia interaction component while linking the verbal code to

the visual code increase vocabulary acquisition? 2) Will the selected variation produce

generalized gains in reading comprehension?

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Chapter 3: Research Method

Introduction

This chapter includes a detailed description of the methodology for this

exploratory study. The purpose of this study was to examine how the interactive use of

multimedia technologies could promote vocabulary acquisition and reading

comprehension in Puerto Rican children from fourth through sixth grade who are learning

ESL. Chapter 3 includes a description of the methodology. This chapter is divided into

the following sections: (a) a description of the study design; (b) the methods for sample

selection; (c) the sample size; (d) a brief description of the participants’ demographics;

(e) a description of the assessment instrument; (f) a description of the research question

and hypotheses; (g) data analyses to test the hypotheses, and (h) a summary of the

information presented in the chapter.

Research Design and Approach

The research design selected was a pretest-posttest design with control and

treatment groups. Groups were randomly divided between those in a multimedia

vocabulary intervention program and those learning the same vocabulary with traditional

classroom practices. Within each of the groups, the school English teacher created three

English levels: beginner, intermediate, and advanced. Students at the beginner level in the

control groups and students at the beginner level in the treatment groups worked with the

same readings and vocabulary and received the same pretest and posttest evaluations. The

same procedure was executed with the intermediate and advanced students. All variables

operating in each group and language level were identical except for the multimedia

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vocabulary intervention program. Participants were similar in terms of academic

achievement because the school did not assign groups based on students’ academic

performance. The school released the deidentified data set to me via a data use

agreement.

Population

Juan Ponce De León School was the first public school in Puerto Rico to

successfully implement Montessori methodology and educational philosophy at all

academic levels. It has been a Montessori school for more than 10 years. It is located in

an urban, small, low-income community called Juan Domingo. However, families in

nearby wealthy communities can also send their children to the school. In this academic

year (2015-2016), 51% of the total student population (331 students) lives below the

poverty level. The Juan Ponce De León School actively participates in the formulation of

public policy that supports the development of additional Montessori public schools

around the island. At this community-based school, the majority of the children come

from the Juan Domingo community or are the children of alumni. This has been an

essential factor in the development of strong parental involvement in the school.

The school offers all Montessori levels, which are divided by age: 0–3 years

(infant and toddler), 3–6 years (early childhood), 6–9 years (lower elementary), 9–12

years (upper elementary), and 12–15 years (middle school or Erdkinder). Each

Montessori level is made up of several multiage classrooms, which include students from

three academic grades. For example, the upper elementary level consists of four

classrooms containing students of what are traditionally referred to as the fourth, fifth,

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and sixth grades. All classrooms have about six to seven students of each academic grade,

and the average classroom size is 22 students. Every classroom has a main teacher and a

teaching assistant. Most of the lessons are given in small groups of students from the

same academic grade; few are given to the whole classroom simultaneously. ESL

education begins at the early childhood level, and there is one separate English teacher

per level. The English teacher visits the classrooms during the day to teach small lessons

and leave follow-up work. Commonly, English lessons last less than half an hour, and

during the rest of the day lessons are given in Spanish.

Sampling and Sampling Procedure

The population under study was very specific: ESL learners from a public

Montessori school in Puerto Rico. The only students who fit this description were those

attending Juan Ponce De León School. The study sample consisted of children at the

upper elementary level because it was expected that at this level, reading comprehension

difficulties would be primarily related to vocabulary acquisition and not to decoding

reading factors (Becker, 1977; Chall & Conard, 1991; Chall, Jacobs, & Baldwin, 1990;

Francis et al., 2008; Lesaux & Kieffer, 2010; Silverman & Crandall, 2010; Snowling &

Hulme, 2011). Therefore, the study sample was a convenience sample (Johnson &

Christensen, 2008). As commented previously, this type of sampling presents the

limitations of any nonrandom sampling method affecting the generalizability of the

results.

Studies implementing vocabulary-learning strategies using technology with

samples of between 30 and 90 participants have found significant differences between

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control and treatment groups (Basoglu & Akdemir, 2010; Lan, 2013; Lin & Tseng,

2012). Cohen (1988) suggested that groups consisting of 30 participants for a medium to

large effect size will lead to 80% power. In Juan Ponce De León School, there were 85

students at the upper elementary level between the ages of 9 to 12, distributed in four

Montessori classrooms. Within each classroom, there were three academic levels: (a)

fourth grade, (b) fifth grade, and (c) sixth grade. However, Montessori philosophy

allows students within the same classroom to undertake work intended for any of the

academic levels corresponding to the classroom. Commonly, students in an English

course are distributed not according to their academic level, but according to their

language level. The distribution of students per grade was 28 in fourth grade, 30 in fifth

grade, and 28 in sixth grade. Students were assigned to these groups in their first year of

upper elementary, and the distribution was not based on their academic performance.

Therefore, groups were academically homogeneous. However, the English teacher

divided all upper elementary students into three English levels: beginner, intermediate,

and advance. Finally, to be considered eligible to participate in the study, children had to

be active students at the upper elementary level at the selected school. Two of the

school’s upper elementary classrooms were assigned randomly to the multimedia English

vocabulary intervention, while the other two classrooms received traditional assignments

for learning English vocabulary.

Additionally, the school administration agreed to released deidentified data about

the participants’ current age, gender, family socioeconomic status, and English language

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experiences outside the school environment. The deidentified test and demographic data

were linked.

Intervention

The intervention consisted of an 8-week program conducted by the Juan Ponce De

León upper elementary English teacher. Prior to the intervention, the school administered

three reading comprehension maze cloze pretests to students in the control and treatment

groups, one for each of the English language levels: beginner, intermediate, and

advanced. At the beginning of each week, students read a short story related to their

cultural studies curriculum and, guided by their teacher, discussed important concepts

and identified key words. Then, students defined the concepts in their own words. Stahl

and Nagy (2006) suggested that teachers assess students’ understanding of definitions by

making them restate concepts in their own words. During word definition, the teacher

provided instruction in word form by teaching specific key suffixes, allowing students to

figure out unknown words in a text by using word parts (Baumann et al., 2002; Lesaux et

al., 2010). Key words were then defined and represented by the students. The treatment

group defined words, demonstrated additional meanings, and practiced word morphology

using multimedia technologies to create dictionaries that integrated pictures, audio, and

text in a digital environment. The only difference between the treatment group and the

control group was that the latter did not work with the multimedia technology.

Instrumentation and Materials

This study used reading comprehension pre- and posttests for the beginning and

the end of the program, as well as sociodemographic deidentified data provided by the

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school. The sociodemographic deidentified data provided by the school were linked to

the pretest-posttest data.

Reading Comprehension Tests

To test reading comprehension, cloze tests were created. They presented students

with one or more paragraphs in which some words were systematically omitted. These

omissions needed to be supplied by the reader using syntactic and semantic keys obtained

from the text (Condemarin & Milicić, 1988). Through this reading comprehension testing

procedure, the reader was required to interact with the text as active readers searching for

meaning. Therefore, in order to comprehend and fill in the missing words, students had to

focus their attention on the processing of contextual codes (Condemarin & Milicić,

1988). There are multiple variations of the cloze test, such as the maze cloze, cloze with

pairing, cloze with helping keys, cumulative cloze, and oral postreading cloze

(Condemarin & Milicić, 1988). The maze cloze test includes several words from which

the reader must choose in order to fill in the blanks in a paragraph. Three words are

included under a blank space; only one is suitable for filling in the blank, and the other

two are used as distractors. The student selects one word and places it in the blank. Take,

for instance, the sentence “Since the (yard, living room, bathroom) tends to be humid after bathing and

showering, it’s a likely place to find them.” In this example, the student has to choose

between the words yard, living room, and bathroom.

Baldauf and Propst (1979) claimed that maze cloze is a valid and reliable measure

for assessing reading comprehension in ESL students. McGraw (2006) found that the

maze measure is a useful reading comprehension instrument for upper elementary

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students. Therefore, a maze instrument was created and used as a measure of reading

comprehension in this study.

A team of authors created the reading passages for the maze cloze tests. Story

ideas were provided to these authors. The ideas provided to the authors related to a topic

studied in the curriculim of the upper elementary Montessori school. The criteria used for

the passages’ creation were selected from McGraw (2006). These criteria are presented in

Table 1 and take into account students’ academic level.

Table 1

Criteria for Maze Cloze Passage Creation

1. Passages should have a beginning, middle and end.

2. Use proper names sparsely and carefully.

3. Passages should be engaging in the first paragraph.

4. Avoid lists of things.

5. Passages should be sensitive and respectful to all groups and subgroups.

6. Passages should be grammatically correct with mature phrasing and convectional sentence

structure.

7. Passages should flow rather than be abrupt.

8. Passages should be gentle, positive, and friendly, modeling pro-social behaviors.

9. Passages should include issues of diversity in terms of socioeconomic factors, disability, race,

ethnicity, family, structures, background, and culture.

10. A mixture of 60% expository and 40% narrative passages.

Note. From Identifying Valid Measures of Reading Comprehension: Comparing the Validity of Oral Reading Fluency, Retell Fluency, and Maze Procedures (Doctoral dissertation), by K. A. McGraw, 2006, available from ProQuest Dissertations & Theses Full Text database. (UMI No. 305274240)

69

The readability levels of the passages used in the maze cloze instruments were measured

using the Simple Measure of Gobbledygook (SMOG) readability calculator. Based on the

McGraw (2006) study, the readability criteria for beginner-level English students in

SMOG is 8.3. For students at the intermediate and advanced levels, it is 8.9.

Demographic Information

English proficiency is highly influenced by socioeconomic variables and home

language experiences (Dixon, Wu, & Daraghmeh, 2012; Garnett, 2010; Tseng, Tsai, &

Chao, 2013). Thus, the school provided sociodemographic information. This information

reflected variables such as gender, age, socioeconomic status, and English language

experiences in the school environment.

Definition of Operational Measures

Nachmias and Nachmias (2008) described operational definitions as forming

connections between theoretical concepts and the empirical level. Operational definitions

become measurements when researchers can assigns numerals (numbers or symbols) to

variables according to prescribed rules (Nachmias & Nachmias, 2008). In this study, I

wanted to determined whether the multimedia vocabulary intervention had an impact on

the students’ maze cloze test scores. Therefore, the independent variable in this study was

the vocabulary intervention program, which was designed but not implemented by the

me. The dependent variable was children’s reading comprehension ability, measured with

a cloze test before and after the children’s completion of the intervention program. The

intervention condition involved a Montessori approach whereby students created

multimedia dictionaries to learn new vocabulary words. The dependent variables were

70

measured by changes in students’ scores on the pre and post maze cloze vocabulary tests

that were administered by the school during this study. The school released the

deidentified data set for the pre and posttest results to me via a data use agreement.

The potential intervening variables included socioeconomic level and the level of

exposure to the English language that students had at home by watching television,

interacting with video games, or speaking with their parents. The school gathered this

information through forms parents had to complete at the beginning of each academic

year. In addition, parents’ or teachers’ assistance in the construction of the multimedia

dictionaries might have had an impact on both the independent and the dependent

variable. Finally, although the school population came mainly from the low-income Juan

Domingo Community, there were upper class communities close to the school. Garnett

(2010) found that English proficiency is highly influenced by students’ ethnographic

background and socioeconomic status. Therefore, a demographic variable such as family

income may have influenced the outcomes.

Data Collection and Analysis

In the study setting, all students received their English instruction from the same

teacher. This teacher administered the maze cloze pretests to both the control and

treatment groups at the beginning of the research and the same test at the end of the 8-

week intervention program. The results of the pretest and posttest of the treatment and

control groups were compared using self-paired t tests. The pretest data acted as a

covariate that adjusted the posttest data so that they reflected more accurately the effect

of the treatments.

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The final samples of the study consisted of 44 students in the control group and

41 students in the treatment group. Therefore, a normal curve will not approximate the

sampling distribution of the difference between means, and inaccurate conclusions could

be obtained (Nachmias & Nachmias, 2008). In this case, Nachmias and Nachmias (2008)

recommended the sample distribution t. The data from the maze cloze tests were obtained

in percentages. Therefore, the data were transformed with arcsine transformation to

stabilize the variances prior to the statistical analysis. For reporting purposes, the data

were returned to they original scale. A t test was used to compare the pretest and posttest

means of the treatment and control groups to determine the effectiveness of the

multimedia vocabulary intervention with a significance level of p < .05. If the pretest and

posttest differences had been significant, then an ANCOVA analysis would have been

executed. The ANCOVA analysis would have been used to determine whether there was

a statistically significant difference between the treatment group and the nontreatment

group. In turn, if there had been a statistically significant difference between the two

groups, an effect size would have been reported. It has been suggested by Huttema (2011)

that, for the sake of clarity, effect size should be a standardized effect size.

Protection of Human Participants

For this study, participants interacted only with their English teacher. The teacher

was in charge of the implementation of the intervention and the tests. I had no direct

contact with the children. All test results were confidential, with serial codes used to

avoid identification of the participants. In addition, all of the data collected were kept in a

secure place with limited access for the general public in order to assure confidentiality. I

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ensured that no participant could be identified and used a database containing

deidentified individual student data only for research purposes. Finally, the data were not

sold, exchanged, or altered partially or completely under any circumstances.

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Chapter 4: Results

Introduction

This chapter includes the results of the study. First, a detailed description of the

data collection parameters is provided. Then, the process of data screening and

preparation is described, followed by a presentation of the demographic characteristics of

the final samples and a summary of the data analysis of the pretest and posttest scores.

Purpose and Problem

The purpose of this study was to examine the effect of multimedia technologies

on vocabulary acquisition and reading comprehension in ESL upper elementary children.

Although multimedia technologies have proven to be effective educational tools for

language and information acquisition, most of the studies supporting their use have been

conducted at the university level and have required a passive role for the student (Chai &

Erlam, 2008; Cohen & Johnson, 2010; Farley et al., 2012; Mayer & Moreno, 2003;

Rosen et al., 2012; Schwartz, 2005; Silverman & Hines, 2009). The literature review

demonstrated that there is little evidence of the effect that multimedia technology use

might have on the acquisition of vocabulary over the short and long term. Furthermore,

the literature has not addressed whether an active role while using this technology might

increase students’ learning results and ultimately reading comprehension.

Research Questions

This study addressed two research questions. The first question involved testing

whether the use of multimedia technology would have an effect in the processing of new

vocabulary. It was presumed that the use of interactive multimedia technologies would

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result in an increase of deep processing of new vocabulary in ESL upper elementary

children. The second research question involved the exploration of whether the

interaction of the students with new vocabulary through the use of multimedia

technologies would contribute to increases in their reading comprehension capacity. It

was assumed that ESL upper elementary children’s reading comprehension capacity

would increase as a result of their active interaction with multimedia technologies to

learn vocabulary.

Data Screening and Preparation

The administration of the Juan Ponce de León Montessori School agreed to

implement the multimedia program in the school’s four upper elementary classrooms as

part of their yearly English learning program. In this school, upper elementary students

receive English instruction from the same teacher. For this study, the teacher divided

students in each classroom into three English levels: beginner, intermediate, and

advanced. Afterward, the English teacher randomly assigned two of the four classrooms

to the treatment group and the other two to the control group. The English teacher

administered the maze cloze pretests for each English level (i.e., one for the beginner

English level, a second one for the intermediate English level, and another for the

advanced English level) to students from both the control and the treatment groups during

the beginning of the research period and administered the same test again at the end of

the 8-week intervention program. The school electronically released deidentified test

results in addition to students’ deidentified demographic information. Subjects were

eliminated from the data set if they did not take one of the tests (pre- or posttest). The

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upper elementary classrooms consisted of 86 students. The final data set had a total of 85

subjects. The distribution of the subjects by English level was 28 at the beginner level, 39

at the intermediate level, and 18 at the advanced level. The beginner level had 13 subjects

in the control group and 15 in the treatment group, and the intermediate level had 20

subjects in the control group and 19 in the treatment group. The advanced group had 8

subjects in the control group and 10 in the treatment group (see Table 2).

Table 2

Final Distribution of Subjects

Beginner

Intermediate Advanced Totals

Control 13 20 8 41 Treatment 15 19 10 44 Total 28 39 18 85

Intervention Fidelity

The intervention consisted of an 8-week program conducted by the upper

elementary English teacher at the Juan Ponce de León School. The teacher divided

students into three English language levels: beginner, intermediate, and advanced. Then

he picked two classrooms randomly to participate in the multimedia intervention, with

the other two participating in regular Montessori vocabulary learning practices.

Students were expected to work with the selected vocabulary every week. However,

during the 8-week program, the students delayed their work and did not reach the

expected vocabulary goals. Therefore, the students engaged in less vocabulary practice

than expected. This might have had a negative effect on the study results.

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Study Results

The study results are divided among the three English levels into which students

were divided (beginner, intermediate, and advanced). Demographic information about the

students was supplied by the school for each of the English levels.

Beginner ELL Sample

Demographics. The beginner ELL sample consisted of 28 students, 14 males

(53.8%) and 12 females (42.9%). No gender information was available for two of the

students in this group. The students ranged in age from 8 years (3.6%) to 14 years (3.6%)

with a standard deviation of 1.190. The average age for the sample was 10. Many of the

parents and guardians of the participating students reported a high school diploma

(28.6%) or an associate degree (17.9%) as the highest level of education. For the

majority of the students (86%, n = 24), Spanish was the first language spoken at home.

However, 64% (n = 18) of parents and guardians described their children’s level of

exposure to English outside school as between intermediate and high. This exposure was

attributed mostly to watching television and playing video games.

Paired t tests. The paired t test was conducted to determine if there was a

difference in results between the pretest and the posttest for the treatment group and the

control group. The mean difference for the experimental group was -.334 in favor of the

posttest results. However, a confidence interval of 95% for the means differences resulted

in a probability value of .74 or 74% (greater than .05) with a range of differences between

-.08673 and .06365 in favor of the posttest results. Therefore, the observed differences

between the results in the pretest and posttest for the treatment group were not

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statistically significant for a p value of 5%. Similarly, the mean difference for the control

group was .565 in favor of the posttest results with a probability value of .58 or 58% (.58

≥ p = .05) and in a range of differences between -.17511 and .10511 in favor of the

posttest results. Consequently, the observed differences between the results in the pretest

and posttest for the control groups were not statistically significant for a p value of 5%

(see Table 3).

Table 3

Result of Control vs. Experimental Groups, Beginner ESL Level, n = 28

Group Mean (SD) pretest

Mean (SD) posttest

Statistic (p-value)

Treatment .4538 (.09233) n =13

.4654 (.10284) n =13

t = -.334; (.74)

Control .4550(.12791) n =10

.4900 (.18379) n = 10

t = -.565; (.58)

Independent samples t tests. The independent sample t test was conducted to

determine whether the difference between the means of the treatment and control groups

was statistically significant. The mean difference on the pretest was .025. A confidence

interval of 95% for the means differences resulted in a probability value of .568 or 56.8%

(greater than .05). Equal variances was assumed (Levene’s test for equality of variances

had a significance of .379), and the range of differences was between -.064 and .113. The

observed differences between the results in the pretest for the treatment and control

groups were not statistically significant for a p value of 5%. The mean difference on the

posttest was .025, resulting in a probability value of .710 or 71% (.71 ≥ p = .05) and in a

range of differences between -.115 and .164. Equal variances were not assumed

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(Levene’s test for equality of variances had a significance of .036). Consequently, the

observed differences between the results in the treatment and control groups for the

posttest were not statistically significant for a p value of 5% (see Table 4).

Table 4

Result of Control vs. Experimental Groups, Independent Sample Test of the Beginner

ESL Level

Group Mean (SD) pretest

Mean (SD) posttest

Treatment .44 (.090) n = 15

.47 (.103) n = 13

Control .47 (.129) n = 11

.49 (.184) n = 10

Statistic (p-value)

t = .579; .568

t = .380; .710

Intermediate ELL Sample

Demographics. The intermediate ELL sample consisted of 39 students, 12 males

(30.8%) and 24 females (61.5%). No gender information was available for three of the

students in this group. The students ranged in age from 9 years (15.4%) to 11 years

(33.3%) with a standard deviation of 0.719. The average age for the sample was 10 years.

Parents and guardians reported the following for highest level of education: high school

diploma (10.3%), associate’s degree (25.6%), bachelor’s degree (23.1%), and master’s or

doctoral degree (23.1%). The majority of the students 74.4% (n = 29) had Spanish as

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their first language spoken at home. However, 74% (n = 28) described their children’s

exposure to English outside school as between intermediate and high. This exposure was

attributed mostly to watching television and playing video games.

Paired t tests. The mean difference on the experimental group was -.11754 in

favor of the posttest results. A confidence interval of 95% for the means differences

resulted in a probability value of .013 or 1.3% (.013 ≤ p = .05) with a range of differences

between -.20725 and -.02783 in favor of the posttest results. Therefore, the observed

differences between the results in the pretest and posttest for the treatment group were

statistically significant for a p value of 5%. However, the mean difference on the control

group was -.05561 in favor of the posttest result, although with a probability value of

.076 or 7.6% (0.076 ≥ p = .05) and in a range of differences between -.11772 and .00650

in favor of the posttest results. Consequently, the observed differences between the

results in the pretest and posttest for the control groups were not statistically significant

for a p value of 5% (see Table 5).

Table 5

Result of the Control vs. Experimental Groups, Intermediate ESL Level, n = 39

Group Mean (SD) pretest

Mean (SD) posttest

Statistic (p-value)

Treatment .5815 (.21977) n = 19

.6990 (.20550) n = 19

t = -2.753; (.013)

Control .6000 (.25742) n = 20

.6556 (.19704) n = 20

t = -1.874; (.076)

Independent samples t tests. The mean difference on the pretest was .01854. A

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confidence interval of 95% for the means differences resulted in a probability value of

.811 or 81.1% (greater than .05). Equal variances were assumed (Levene’s test for

equality of variances significance was .686), and the range of differences was between

-.13715 and .17423. The observed differences between the results in the pretest for the

treatment and control groups were not statistically significant for a p value of 5%. The

mean difference on the posttest was -.04339 in favor of the treatment group and resulting

in a probability value of .505 or 50.5% (.505 ≥ p = .05) and in a range of differences

between -.17400 and .08721. Equal variances were assumed (Levene’s test for equality of

variances significance was .884). Consequently, the observed differences between the

results in the treatment and control groups for the posttest were not statistically

significant for a p value of 5% (see Table 6).

Table 6

Result of the Control vs. Experimental Groups, Independent Sample Test of the

Intermediate ESL Level

Group Mean (SD) pretest

Mean (SD) posttest

Treatment .5815 (.21977) n = 19

.6990 (.20550) n = 19

Control . 6000 (.25742) n = 20

.6556 (.19704) n = 20

Statistic (p-value)

t = .241; .811

t = -.673; .505

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Advanced ELL Sample

Demographics. The advanced ELL sample consisted of 18 students, 9 males

(50.0%) and 8 females (44.4%). No gender information was available for one of the

students in this group. The students ranged in age from 9 years (5.6%) to 12 years

(11.1%) with a standard deviation of 0.752. The average age for the sample was 11 years.

The parents and guardians reported the following for highest level of education:

associate’s degree (22.2%), bachelor’s degree (38.9%), and master’s or doctoral degree

(22.2%). The majority of the students 94.4% (n = 17) had Spanish as their first language

spoken at home. However, 78% (n = 14) described their children’s exposure to English

outside school as between intermediate and high. This exposure was attributed mostly to

watching television and playing video games.

Paired t tests. The mean difference for the experimental group was -.01000 in

favor of the posttest results. A confidence interval of 95% for the means differences

resulted in a probability value of .621 or 62.1% (.621 ≥ p = .05) with a range of

differences between -.06194 and .04194 in favor of the posttest results. Nevertheless, the

observed differences between the results of the pretest and posttest for the treatment

group were not statistically significant for a p value of 5%. Similarly, the mean difference

for the control group was -.04000 in favor of the posttest results, although with a

probability value of .099 or 9.9% (0.099 ≥ p = .05) and in a range of differences between

-.09194 and .01194 in favor of the posttest results. The observed differences between the

results in the pretest and posttest for the control groups were not statistically significant

for a p value of 5% (see Table 7).

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Table 7

Result of the Control vs. Experimental Groups, Advanced ESL Level, n = 18

Group Mean (SD) pretest

Mean (SD) posttest

Statistic (p-value)

Treatment

.8200 (.10368) n = 5

.8100 (.11402) n = 5

t = -.535; (.621)

Control .5815 (.17819) n = 5

.7000 (.21506) n = 5

t = -2.138 (.099)

Independent samples t tests. The mean difference on the pretest was -.004. A

confidence interval of 95% for the means differences resulted in a probability value of

.961 or 96.1% (greater than .05). Equal variances were assumed (Levene’s test for

equality of variances significance was .644), and the range of differences between -.200

and .191. The observed differences between the results in the pretest for the treatment and

control groups were not statistically significant for a p value of 5%. The mean difference

on the posttest was -.110 in favor of the treatment group and resulting in a probability

value of .342 or 34.2% (.342 ≥ p = .05) and in a range of differences between -.361 and

.141. Equal variances were assumed (Levene’s test for equality of variances significance

was .063). Consequently, the observed differences between the results in the treatment

and control groups for the posttest were not statistically significant for a p value of 5%

(see Table 8).

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Table 8

Result of the Control vs. Experimental Groups, Independent Sample Test of the

Advanced ESL level

Group Mean (SD) pretest

Mean (SD) posttest

Treatment .74 (.168) n = 7

.81 (.114) n = 5

Control .73 (.181) n = 8

.70 (.215) n = 5

Statistic (p-value)

t = -.049; .961

t = -1.010; .342

Summary

The purpose of this study was to explore the contribution active use of multimedia

technologies could have in vocabulary acquisition and subsequently reading

comprehension in children from fourth through sixth grade learning English as a second

language. The results demonstrated only a statistical significance of an increase in

student's new vocabulary and reading comprehension for the treatment intermediate level

ESL group. However, when compared to the control group of this same level, no

significance was found. Therefore, there is no enough evidence to demonstrate that this

improvement in the treatment group was a result of the intervention. The intermediate

group was the biggest sample, consisting of 39 students. The rest of the samples consisted

of less than 30. It is likely that sample size created a trend toward significance. Therefore,

in order to attain significance, a bigger sample should be considered.

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Chapter 5: Discussion, Conclusions, and Recommendations

Introduction

Purpose and Nature of the Study

The purpose of this study was to investigate whether taking an active role in using

multimedia technology to construct word meaning would enhance students’ vocabulary

learning and reading comprehension at the upper elementary levels. Students were able to

construct word meaning using a combination of words, images, audio, and video in a

digital environment. The vocabulary selected was related to the topics studied in the rest

of the content areas such as social studies, geography, or biology. Vocabulary acquisition

and reading comprehension were measured by pre and post maze cloze tests that included

several words from which the student had to choose in order to complete a sentence.

Through this study, I attempted to demonstrate that when students have the

opportunity to use multimedia resources actively in their ESL learning process, academic

results are enriched. The supposition was that the simultaneous combination of images,

sounds, and text in a digital environment would allow students to have multiple

references to the word. Learning depends on the effective interaction between long- and

short-term memories (Lohr & Gall, 2008); therefore, it was assumed that having multiple

references to a word would allow learners to access meaning more effectively. Likewise,

it was expected that multiple references to words combined with an active learner role

would increase ESL students’ short- and long-term learning capacity for the vocabulary.

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In summary, the study was design to demonstrate the impact of combining active

learning with multimedia technology to increase vocabulary acquisition and reading

comprehension.

Summary of Key Findings From the Study

Two questions were explored in this study. The first question was the following:

Can the use of interactive multimedia technology (integration of picture, audio, and text

in a digital environment) by ESL upper elementary children increase deep processing of

new vocabulary (measured by application of new vocabulary in multiple contexts)? The

second question addressed the possibility of increasing students’ reading comprehension

capacity: Can ESL upper elementary children’s active interactions with multimedia

technologies for vocabulary learning contribute to increasing their reading

comprehension capacity? The following hypotheses were presented with these questions.

o Null Hypothesis to RQ1: Interactive multimedia technologies will have no

significant effect on ESL upper elementary children’s deep processing of new

vocabulary when compared with their current classroom learning practices.

o Alternate Hypothesis to RQ1: ESL upper elementary children’s use of

interactive multimedia technologies will result in an increase of deep

processing of new vocabulary when compared with their current classroom

learning practices.

o Null Hypothesis to RQ2: ESL upper elementary children’s active interactions

with multimedia technologies for vocabulary learning will make no

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statistically significant contribution to increasing their reading comprehension

capacity.

o Alternative Hypothesis to RQ2: ESL upper elementary children’s active

interactions with multimedia technologies to learn vocabulary will make a

statistically significant contribution to increasing their reading comprehension

capacity when compared with their current classroom learning practices.

This research project found no significant impact of the multimedia treatment on

the dependent variable identified for this study. There was no differential effect on the

results from the reading comprehension tests for those students who had access to

multimedia tools versus the control students who used traditional Montessori vocabulary

learning strategies. Therefore, the null hypothesis for each research question could not be

rejected. There was no significant difference between the treatment and the control

groups’ performance in relation to ESL upper elementary children’s deep processing of

new vocabulary and reading comprehension when compared with their current classroom

learning practices.

It appears that the decision to divide the original sample of students into three

groups according to their level of English had a significant impact on the results obtained

in this research project by substantially reducing the statistical power of the study’s

sample. The original design determined that because each classroom had about six to

seven students of each academic grade and the average classroom size was 22, the sample

would consist of 88 participants, 44 control and 44 treatment. It was assumed that with

these sample sizes, it would be possible to obtain significance differences among the

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control and treatment groups, given that studies in the literature that involved

implementing vocabulary-learning strategies using technology with samples of between

30 and 90 participants had found significant differences among the control and treatment

groups (Basoglu & Akdemir, 2010; Lan, 2013; Lin & Tseng, 2012). However, the

school’s English upper elementary teacher implemented this study, and he decided to

divide all upper elementary students into three English levels (beginner, intermediate, and

advanced), resulting in a significant reduction of the sample sizes. Originally, the study

projected a control sample and an experimental sample independent of the students’

grade or English level. This was due to the fact that Montessori classrooms are multiage,

allowing students to learn at different speeds in the same environment. The subdivision of

the original experimental sample into three groups resulted in smaller sample sizes (15 in

the beginner level, 19 in the intermediate level, and 10 in the advanced level). This action

had the same effect in the control group, where the beginner-level sample had 13

students, the intermediate-level sample had 20 students, and the advanced-level sample

had eight students. In addition, students failing to take the posttest further reduced the

sample sizes. Therefore, at the end, this study involved 85 upper elementary children

divided into three English levels: beginner (n = 28), intermediate (n = 39), and advanced

(n = 18).

The school supplied demographic information about the students from each

English level. This information showed that the three English levels were very similar in

terms of variables such as parental education and language exposure. Parental education

is a socioeconomic factor that has been consistently shown to predict academic outcome

88

for both ESL learners and native English speakers (Neuman, 2008). In all three English

levels, most students’ parents reported a bachelor’s degree or higher as their highest level

of education. The advanced English level had the highest level of parental educational

attainment, with 73% of parents holding a bachelor’s or higher degree. However, there is

evidence that intensive literacy programs can reduce the effect of socioeconomic factors

on students’ academic outcomes and even gradually make them disappear (D’Angiulli,

Siegel, & Maggi, 2004). Similarly, the language used at home, or home language, is

related to literacy development in both ESL learners and native English speakers

(Howard et al., 2014). The first language spoken at home by the vast majority of students

who participated in the study was Spanish. In the beginner group, 88.9% of the sample

spoke only Spanish at home, while in the intermediate group, the percentage was 80.5%

and in the advanced group it was 100%. Although for the majority of the children

participating in this dissertation study the home language was Spanish, parents described

their children’s exposure to English outside school as intermediate to high (66%). The

most common sources of out-of-school English language exposure for the three English

levels were video games, television, and music.

Interpretation of the Findings

Findings and the Literature

Although this study did not generate significant results for the multimedia

vocabulary intervention program, students showed a small improvement in reading

comprehension. Furthermore, in one of the samples, this improvement was statistically

significant. Similar results were found in a study of ESL learners by Lesaux et al. (2010)

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when using depth vocabulary and words with high academic utility. Both Lesaux et al.

(2010) and Rosen et al. (2012) studied the active role of students in learning and showed

that the integration of multimedia elements into the process had positive outcomes,

although with no significant results. The primary causes for the lack of significance in

both of these studies were sample sizes and the measurement instruments used.

In this study, the findings generated from the results of the pre- and posttests in

the intermediate treatment group demonstrate that there is a positive effect in the use of

educational technologies to maximize students’ outcomes in learning vocabulary and

subsequently in their reading comprehension capacity. The mean difference between the

pre- and posttest for this group resulted in a probability value of .013. Moreover, the

mean difference between the pre- and posttest for the intermediate English level control

group resulted in a probability value of .076. These results confirm that when students

learn vocabulary in context (Mancilla-Martinez & Lesaux, 2010) and use multiple

sources of storage, their learning results are increased (Farley et al., 2012).

Analysis and Interpretation of Findings

The empirical analysis of the results revealed that students who used multimedia

technology to actively interact with vocabulary did not obtain better results, on average,

than those participating in regular vocabulary activities. For each of the treatment

samples, when the results were compared with those of the corresponding control groups,

no significant results were observed. The differences observed between the results in the

posttest for the treatment and control groups resulted in higher probability values in favor

of the null hypothesis (beginner samples .71 ≥ p; intermediate samples .505 ≥ p;

90

advanced samples .342 ≥ p). Therefore, a significance claim cannot be made for the

treatment samples when compared to the control samples.

Only one sample showed a statistically significant improvement when compared

with the pretest results. This sample was the English intermediate treatment group. When

compared to results before the intervention, the English intermediate treatment group

demonstrated a significant impact on vocabulary learning and reading comprehension.

The mean difference between the pre- and posttest results in the treatment sample at the

intermediate English level was -.11754 with a probability value of .013 or 1.3%.

Therefore, in the English intermediate treatment group, students improved their

vocabulary knowledge and English comprehension after their participation in the

multimedia vocabulary program. However, when the results for the English intermediate

treatment group were compared to the results for the English intermediate control group,

the differences increased, although not enough to reach statistical significance. The mean

difference between the treatment and control group in the pretest was .01854 with a

probability value of .811 or 81.1%. The difference in the posttest increased to -.04339 in

favor of the treatment group; however, the probability that the multimedia intervention

did not affect students’ reading comprehension remained elevated (.505 ≥ p). This result

suggests that the observed impact of the intervention in the English intermediate

treatment group cannot be entirely attributed to the multimedia vocabulary program.

Nevertheless, studies with strong sample sizes and similar methodological

approaches (Farley et al., 2012; Lesaux et al., 2010; Rosen et al., 2012; Silverman &

Hines, 2009) have also found low or no significance. Among the factors used to explain

91

this fact were the instruments used to measure the study variables (Lesaux et al., 2010)

and the studies’ sample sizes (Farley et al., 2012; Silverman & Hines, 2009).

However, there have been studies in which significance has been observed, which

have shown a positive improvement in ESL learners using technologies for multisensory

vocabulary learning (DiGregorio & Sobel-Lojeski, 2010; Kuo, Yu, & Hsiao, 2013;

López, 2010; Wang, 2011). López (2010) found that ESL learners participating in digital

learning classrooms increased their academic achievement when compared to ESL

learners in traditional classrooms. Kuo, Yu, and Hsiao (2013) found significant

differences between students learning ESL using multimodal presentation software

integrated with an interactive whiteboard and those in regular classrooms. In these

studies, ESL learners’ vocabulary acquisition improved in comparison to their peers in

regular classrooms. The main difference between these studies and the present

dissertation study was the sample size. The sizes of the samples in this dissertation study

were very low, and in some groups they were extremely low, N ≤ 5 (Winter, 2013). The

only group that showed statistical significance (intermediate-level English group) was the

one with the larger sample size. Kuo, Yu, and Hsiao (2013) had a sample of 134 fifth

graders, and López (2010) had a sample of 213 third graders and 151 fifth graders.

Multiple methodologists recommend that researchers regard small sample sizes with

caution because they usually imply low statistical power and therefore a high probability

of rejecting a false null hypothesis (Cohen, 1970; Rossi, 1990). In addition, Siegel (1956)

explained that some parametric tests, such as the t test, have critical assumptions that

cannot be tested when the sample sizes are small.

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In addition, this study was based on the recommendations and results of studies

about learning vocabulary strategies for ESL learners and the use of educational

technology in this process (Farley et al., 2012; Lesaux et al., 2010). Inability to extend the

study for more than 8 weeks may have affected the students’ learning curve in relation to

technology use in the implementation. This would also have lessened the impact of the

intervention. Moreover, because the study depended on secondary data, I did not have the

opportunity to supervise the purity of the implementation process and the delivery of the

pre- and posttests. I should have exercised greater control of the implementation process

and should have insisted on making certain critical decisions, such as the choice to

subdivide the samples, which resulted in very small groups.

Limitations of the Study

This study had several limitations that suggest future research directions. First,

this study was conducted in a very specialized school setting, which significantly limited

the ability to reproduce the results or to generalize the findings. Some of the school’s

particular characteristics were the use of Montessori methodology and philosophy, class

size, and multiage organization of groups. The same study could be implemented in

schools with the Montessori methodology or in nontraditional settings that support the

active engagement of students in the learning process. Second, the school English teacher

conducted the distribution of the study participants into English language levels, in

addition to administering the pre- and posttests and performing corrections. I had no

control over this process. Consequently, it was impossible to prevent the effect of

variables that are known to influence students’ performance when taking a test, especially

93

considering that the children in this school were not accustomed to test taking. Finally,

the sample sizes of this study were low. Therefore, as stated before, some critical

assumptions of the parametric t test could not be tested, and this increases the possibility

of not rejecting a false null hypothesis.

Implications

The Juan Domingo community is a low-income community in one of the richest

municipalities in Puerto Rico. Most of the students attending this school come from low-

income households. Improving their ESL learning achievement could support their

development and increase their academic and professional opportunities for the future.

This type of intervention represents an opportunity for these students to be exposed to

nontraditional learning experiences that broaden their understanding and provide them

with additional learning alternatives. In addition, teachers’ participation in these types of

implementations can present them with many opportunities to update their knowledge of

current methodological trends. Teaching English to ESL learners requires channeling

instruction to pertinent areas where students are able to connect new knowledge more

efficiently. This type of study offers teachers additional tools to practice differentiated

education and may help students to acquire knowledge more effectively.

For future interventions of this nature, I would recommend ensuring that students

have knowledge regarding computer use, Internet access, gathering data, and integration

of audio and images. These technological skills and knowledge would improve students’

success in using multimedia technology and, therefore, would increase the effectiveness

of these tools. Similarly, teachers should be aware of the possible limitations and

94

challenges that technologies might pose to students in order to increase students’ success

in using these tools in their learning process (Dede, Ketelhut, Whitehouse, Breit, &

McCloskey, 2009; Mouza, 2006; Wolff, 2008).

Conclusion

The major purpose of this dissertation was to demonstrate that technologies that

are increasingly available to students have a positive impact in language acquisition. ESL

learners at upper elementary confront the challenges of reading academic grade level

texts without the vocabulary knowledge and reading comprehension proficiencies that are

required. The results of this study showed that a multimedia technology approach

positively contributes to reduce these challenges. However, these results were not

supported by enough statistical significance and further research is required in order to

determine the conditions in which such technologies can best promote the improvement

of vocabulary acquisition and reading comprehension in upper elementary ESL learners.

Recommendations

This study examined the contribution that the active use of multimedia

technologies can have in vocabulary acquisition and reading comprehension of ESL

learners at a Montessori public school in Puerto Rico. No statistical significance was

found in association with the impact of this intervention and the students learning

achievements in vocabulary and reading comprehension. However, all the students

improved their vocabulary acquisition and reading comprehension to some degree, and in

the case of the intermediate treatment group this improvement had statistical significance.

The study revealed that the use of pedagogical strategies, such as the use of multimedia

95

technologies, has a positive effect on the improvement of learning capabilities in ESL

learners. Efforts to replicate this study using a multibaseline design that, through

formative assessment procedures, establishes baseline performance across data series

(Christ, 2007) could be helpful to ensure better result validity. Moreover, further studies

should explore the experiences of teachers and students when working with multimedia

technologies to learn new vocabulary. Moreover, further research should investigate the

potential use of these technologies in other areas, such as writing and pronunciation in the

context of ESL learners on elementary grade levels or in higher educational settings.

Finally, it is important that future researchers gather a group of ELS learners more

representative of the ESL learners in Puerto Rico, extending further the impact of their

results.

96

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Appendix A: IRB Approval Number

The IRB approval number for this study is 10-21-15-0069115.